


What I want to feel, I want to feel it now

by RabbitRunnah



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Meeting, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Fairy Tale Elements, M/M, Non-Hockey Jack, Professional Baker Eric Bittle, a hint of magic (if you squint)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:54:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 28,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21576388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RabbitRunnah/pseuds/RabbitRunnah
Summary: Eric Bittle knows the way his life is supposed to go: According to an old family curse, the love of his life will take one bite of his famous apple pie and fall madly in love with him. And they'll live happily ever after.There's only one problem: Jack Zimmermann doesn't like pie.
Relationships: Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Jack Zimmermann
Comments: 186
Kudos: 696
Collections: OMGCP Big Bang 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Over a year ago, I set out to write a Zimbits fairy tale. It was loosely based on “The Princess and the Pea,” only instead of a princess there was a hockey prince and instead of a pea there was a pie.
> 
> This is not that story. This is not even that fairy tale.
> 
> After some time away from this story, I picked it up again for the OMGCP Big Bang because I thought there was still something to it. Not a fairy tale, but maybe something else about love and longing and finding your place in the world.
> 
> If fics are our children, then this one is my problem child. I have revised, edited, rewritten, and tossed out so many words over the past several months that there’s probably another story in there somewhere. What I’m left with sure is ... something (not a fairytale) ... but I can no longer put off launching it into the wild so here it is. 
> 
> Many many many thanks to [catc10](https://catc10.tumblr.com), who stepped up as a pinch hitter when my original artist partner unexpectedly had to drop out two weeks before our original posting date. Check out the art on [Tumblr](https://catc10.tumblr.com/post/189318787165/my-part-for-another-big-bang-fic-this-one-is-al)! It's embedded in the fic as well, and it's beautiful.
> 
> It takes a village to raise even a problem child, and I have to thank everyone who beta’d and read bits and pieces of this and offered constructive criticism and suggestions and reassurance as I wrote and revised and wrote and edited and doubted myself: [McBangle](https://mcbangle.tumblr.com), [wrathofthestag](https://wrathofthestag.tumblr.com), [porcupine-girl](https://porcupine-girl.tumblr.com), and [teamzimbits](https://teamzimbits.tumblr.com) teamzimbits. 
> 
> There’s a scene in here inspired by an R.E.M. song, but the title of this fic comes from the lyrics of a different R.E.M. song, ["Strange Currencies"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYo2GtEvMQI).

Eric Bittle always knew he was different.

It wasn’t because he was smaller than the other boys, or because he was a gifted baker, or because he was gay. Eric Bittle was different because he was cursed.

“Not cursed,” Mama would say when he complained about how unfair it was. “You have a gift.”

And okay, maybe that gift had a little to do with being a talented baker, but some days it still felt like a curse.

*

Madison Pie Palace served more than 40 different types of pie, though only the apple was on the menu daily. Eric’s great-grandparents on the Phelps side opened the diner together early in their marriage, having met while working as a waitress and busboy at a truck stop near Atlanta.

For a few years Front Street Diner served the usual comfort foods and home-style favorites, but it really took off when they discovered Eric’s great-grandma Shirley had a talent — some would call it unnatural — for making pie. Their reputation spread, and by the time Eric’s MooMaw came along, the diner had been rebranded as Madison Pie Palace.

That’s where the curse came in.

Great Grandma Shirley’s apple pie was so popular lesser bakers tried to replicate the recipe, always unsuccessfully. More than one employee had been fired for attempting to steal it and pass it off as their own in the county fair’s annual competition. Magazine and cookbook editors frequently called, hoping to profit from publishing it. Rumor had it Eric’s MooMaw, before marrying Eric’s grandfather, turned down a proposal from a frozen foods heir who wanted to mass produce the pie and market it nationwide.

“Oh, honey,” MooMaw told Eric once, “that Yankee was a tall drink of water. But every time I tried to imagine my mama’s pie sitting in some grocery store freezer, on sale for five dollars, I felt ill.” She dramatically threw a hand across her forehead, as though just imagining the horror brought on the vapors.

Suzanne, Eric’s mother, endured no such proposal. She and Eric’s daddy met while engaged in the All-American high school pastimes of cheerleading and football. As Suzanne told it, she’d landed on the ground during a botched aerial stunt because her catcher, Jenny Jones, was distracted by the cute quarterback walking by on his way to his own practice.

“That was your daddy,” Mama always said, in the retelling of the story.

Varsity quarterback Richard Bittle, who saw the whole thing happen, rushed to help Suzanne to her feet. “I just looked up and there he was,” she said. Richard never had anything to add; he just smiled adoringly at his wife when she got to that part of the story. By the first home game of the season the two were a couple and by spring Richard had a part-time job at the Pie Palace.

Upon their marriage they took their rightful place in the family business, as managers alongside Suzanne’s parents. There were still the sly questions from customers about secret ingredients, still offers from groups to buy a stake in the restaurant and franchise the name. But the family was determined to keep it a family business and while part-time employees came and went, the pies were made exclusively by family members. Every so often they had to fire an employee who asked too many questions, but the secret recipes remained safe and the Pie Palace’s reputation for serving the sweetest pies with the flakiest crust remained unmatched.

But by the time Eric came along, Great Grandma Shirley — by then an old woman and maybe _not quite_ in her right mind — was convinced “they” were out to get her recipe. And so she did what any normal slightly paranoid entrepreneur would do, and cursed her only great-grandchild.

Eric didn’t remember being cursed but he’d watched the video of his first birthday party, where Great Grandma had issued the edict, countless times. What started with a birthday song and a round-cheeked baby Eric smashing his hand into his mini pie ended with Great Grandma’s dark muttering about thieves and scoundrels. And then, the curse: “Many will love you, but beware of those with an ulterior motive. Only your true love will be able to taste the secret ingredient in the apple pie.”

To be fair, it was a great recipe.

*

Most people dismissed “the curse” as the half-baked ramblings of an old woman, but there was no denying that Great Grandma Shirley had an uncanny ability to predict the future, a talent famously discovered when Minnie Howard’s prized Macaw, Tiki, flew the coop and took up residence in the tree outside Shirley’s bedroom window.

For three days — until Minnie’s grandson was finally able to coax her down — Tiki sang the chorus to “Ring of Fire” and quoted Bruce Willis movies. Minnie profusely thanked Shirley for “putting up with Tiki’s antics.”

“Drop dead,” Shirley had replied.

A week later, Minnie slipped on a pile of wet leaves on the sidewalk outside her house and broke her hip. A broken hip was far from dead, and nobody could _prove_ Shirley had spoken it into existence, but it was close enough to give her a reputation.

*

There was never a question as to what Eric would do with his life. Maybe, once upon a time, he dreamed about being a champion figure skater, but as soon as he was old enough to hold down a job he went to work in the family business and skating competitions took a back seat to perfecting the pie recipes that had been passed down through the generations. He didn’t mind all that much. He’d always loved baking, and thought it was something he would do even if he hadn’t been born into it. Sometimes he’d watch his parents together in the kitchen, the way they’d casually touch each other as they worked through their various tasks, and sigh dreamily, thinking about his own future love. He wondered how it would happen. He liked to think he would know right away, before she even ordered, and the rest would be a mere formality.

*

Macy Lee Hansen had jet black hair and an easy smile and a look in her eye that suggested she knew a few things about what boys really wanted. What _Macy_ wanted was Eric, a fact that had not gone unnoticed by Eric _or_ his parents.

Macy’s parents owned Ground Control, a small-but-successful chain of coffee shops of the hipster-attracting variety. Their ethically sourced coffees and teas, along with their selection of “alternative” milks, were a far cry from anything sold in Madison Pie Palace, but their pastries were so-so, at best. In other words, they weren’t too much of a threat to business, but there was — according to Mama — potential for a merger.

She always winked when she said that, which always made Eric feel like he’d swallowed a brick. He knew Macy liked him, and of course he liked her back, he just wasn’t sure he liked her _in that way_. But Macy was safe. She’d had a crush on Eric since the eighth grade. And while he didn’t exactly return those feelings, he did feel _something_ for her. She was kind and quick-witted and even in heels, she was shorter than he was. They looked good in their prom pictures.

Macy went to college in Alabama and brought her accounting major boyfriend home for Christmas her sophomore year. “I’m sorry,” she tearfully told Eric over pie the night before New Year’s Eve. “I guess I never really broke up with you.” Eric found himself in the awkward position of having to console his high school sweetheart and reassure her that it was okay for her to break up with him. Honestly, it was all a relief. Eric still wasn’t sure how love worked, but he knew the spark he was supposed to feel when Macy walked into the room just wasn’t there. No spark, not even an ember. He’d never felt a spark, and had started to wonder if he ever would.

Macy was allergic to apples, anyway.

*

Eric was 22 before he realized that no matter how hard his parents hoped, none of the women who walked through the doors were his soulmate.

Truth be told, he’d always had a feeling that might be the case. In high school, he and Macy had a standing Tuesday “date”after school — Tuesday being the one day of the week neither worked in their respective family business. But the days Eric most looked forward to were the spring afternoons the boys on the baseball team stopped by for shakes and fries after practice.

One boy in particular — Sean, varsity shortstop, one year Eric’s senior — always lingered a little longer than the other boys and kept him company as he wiped down tables and swept the floor before the dinner rush. It may have been because he was lonely: Sean’s mama worked the night shift at the hospital, and his older siblings were all away at college. But there was something about the way Sean looked at Eric, the way he smiled when Eric told a joke or brought him an extra slice of pie to take home to his mama. Sometimes it felt like Sean was interested in more than pie. Eric began to think _he_ was definitely interested in more than pie. The things he wanted to do with Sean … Well, the things he wanted to do with Sean were the things he was supposed to want to do with Macy. But the thought of doing those things with Macy left him cold.

“I’ll see you around, Eric,” Sean said the night before he left for college. He’d been busing tables all summer to help pay for everything his baseball scholarship didn’t cover. “Thanks for all the free pie.”

“Oh, it was nothing! I always have pie for my friends,” Eric said, hoping Sean wouldn’t see him blush. Were he and Sean friends? He supposed they were, even if they didn’t really acknowledge each other outside of work.

“And for my mom,” Sean said. “Thanks again. I’ll make sure to come by on break. Will you have a slice of lemon meringue ready?”

“Sure you don’t want apple?” Eric asked, strangely hopeful though he wasn’t sure why.

“Nah. Your apple is too sweet.” He smiled softly. “Like you. You’re so _nice_ , Eric. I wish I could —” He abruptly looked away from Eric, as though the scuffed tile floor was suddenly very interesting.

“Wish what?” Eric asked, heart pounding.

“Nothing,” Sean said, shaking his head at the ground. “You should come to a game in the spring. Or come visit for a weekend. I can show you the campus.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Eric said, knowing he wouldn’t. Mama and Coach wouldn’t suspect anything if he were to go to visit his friend, would probably even encourage it. But something about it seemed wrong, and dangerous, and even Sean looked like he wasn’t sure.

“Well,” Sean said, “I should go. My mom has a big family dinner planned. Take care of yourself, okay?”

Eric nodded, heart in his throat. “You, too, Sean. Have fun in college. I’ll be rooting for the Bulldogs next spring.” He gave Sean an awkward hug, because he always hugged his friends, and then Sean was getting into his Jeep Wrangler to head to whatever new life lay ahead of him in Athens.

He didn’t understand why he felt like crying as he watched the Jeep’s taillights fade away.

*

Sean was the first boy Eric noticed, but he wasn’t the last. There was Aaron, the Marine who used to stop in on his road trips to see his girlfriend in Atlanta when he had leave. There was Harris, the sweet doctor doing his residency at the children’s hospital in Madison. Bitty would serve him coffee after his shift. Luke, Diego, Matt — they all ordered the apple pie and each time Eric felt something spark inside of him. He ran his finger over the raised names on their credit cards before he swiped them, thinking _maybe_ …

Meanwhile, his parents pointed out every young lady who looked like she _might_ be single, and hoped for the best.

“You know,” MooMaw said causally one afternoon as the family took a few minutes for a team meeting between the lunch and dinner rushes, “it’s been a good six months since a young lady has ordered the apple. I wonder if we’re overlooking something. Don’t you think, Dicky?” she asked, using the nickname only Eric’s family seemed to use these days.

Eric’s face burned as she smiled in his direction, but it felt like an opening.

His parents took the news better than he expected but, then again, they had never argued when it came to the curse. If the curse or magic or whatever it was said Eric’s one true love was a man, well, then the curse must be right.

“Well, then. That sure explains some things,” Daddy said.

“Mm,” Mama hummed. “Good thing we figured it out sooner rather than later. Goodness, Dicky, what if he’s already come and gone? It could be years before he returns!”

They were so enthusiastic about this revelation that Eric began to wish he hadn’t said anything at all. Because now, instead of looking at every girl who came through the doors and hoping she’d order the apple, they were looking at the boys. And oh lord, were they ever annoying.

“Table Twelve,” Mama hissed in Eric’s ear as she passed him in the kitchen. “Cute, about your age, isn’t wearing a ring.”

Eric felt his heart sink as he approached Table Twelve. He knew better than to make assumptions based on looks but, well, he’d always hoped he’d find his future husband at least a little attractive.

“Welcome to Madison Pie Palace, what can I get you this evening?” Eric asked the man.

“I’ll have a slice of the apple.” He winked. “Keep hearing about it. Thought I’d finally try it for myself.”

“We’re all out of apple,” Eric said, faking an apologetic tone.

“ _Dicky_ ,”Mama warned from the kitchen.

“Actually, I think one may be just out of the oven now,” he quickly added. “I’ll just go check.”

As Eric plated the pie, Mama fixed him with her most disappointed look. “Dicky, you know you can’t just decide who you’re gonna serve. That’s not how it works.”

“How does it work, Mama? I’m 25 years old and nobody even worth marrying, let alone having a hot little fling with, has come through these doors.”

“He could be the one.”

“ _Mother_. I saw him pull up in a pickup truck with an NRA sticker. Everything he’s wearing is camo print. A different camo print. He’s not the one.”

“Then it won’t matter if he eats the pie,” Mama said sweetly, “since he’s not the one.”

Eric quickly plated a slice of pie and presented it to the gentleman with a big fake smile and little fanfare. “Enjoy,” he said before heading back into the kitchen.

“Be a little more polite next time,” Mama scolded. “That’s no way to make a first impression.”

In the end, it didn’t matter anyway. Camo Man wasn’t the one.

*

Chad Edwards showed up in Madison promising Eric the world, and for a little while he believed him.

Travel writers and Food Network specials had been profiling Madison Pie Palace for years. Sometimes it was a “hidden gem.” Other times, it made top ten countdowns. Although they’d certainly never hired a publicist, and Eric couldn’t recall Oprah ever making a visit herself, _O Magazine_ had, one memorable summer, named the key lime pie one of her “favorite things.” This had ushered in new waves of tourists who drove out of their way to try it. The boom in business allowed the family to hire a few more part-time employees so Eric could devote most of his time to the daily baking.

What most of the profiles missed, Chad told Eric, was that it was Eric who kept the diner relevant. MooMaw was mostly retired and Eric’s parents handled the business side of things; it was Eric’s updated recipes and creative social media posts that kept landing Madison Pie Palace on the “best of” lists.

“I’ve been wanting to do a reality show about a family business for a long time,” Chad explained to the Bittles. “It would center on Eric taking over the business and preserving its legacy.

He absentmindedly tapped the side of his fork against his pie plate as he laid out his plan, an off-putting habit that set Eric’s teeth on edge.

His parents were set against the show from the start. “Filming behind-the-scenes videos for our social media is one thing,” Mama said. “Showing all of creation how the sausage is made is another.”

Mama had a point but so did Chad, who tried to woo Eric with trips to Atlanta and New York City to meet with producers and network executives. There may have been dinners at five-star restaurants involved. There may have been wine, and dessert, and a fancy apartment overlooking Central Park. “It’s not mine,” Chad confessed. “It’s my uncle’s.”

Chad’s uncle, Eric came to learn, was the CEO of Edwards Entertainment, the production company behind some of the most popular food and travel shows on television. Chad, it turned out, was just an entry level production assistant who’d managed to convince his uncle to let him helm a new web series.

“You said Netflix or Food Network,” Eric said. He might be from the Georgia sticks, but he knew the difference between web-based and Netflix.

“Well ...” Chad hedged. “My uncle thinks that it’s better to start out small, give you a chance to go viral, and then approach one of the big streaming companies.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Eric said. Chad did, after all, have more experience than he did, even if he was only a production assistant and not, as he’d indicated when they’d met, an executive.

“We’ll give it the full multimedia treatment,” Chad told him over dinner, which may or may not have been a date. It seemed like a date because they were seated at a cozy table for two and Chad kept putting his hand on Eric’s knee, but the conversation seemed more like a business negotiation. “I’ve seen your website, but it’s kind of basic. Our team will develop a whole experience. Extras, behind the scenes, and the recipes, of course.”

Eric paused, wine glass halfway to his lips. “Recipes?”

“It’s a food show. Viewers will want the recipes.”

“Our recipes have never been published,” Eric said. “My family will never agree to it. That’s non-negotiable.”

“Eric,” Chad said patiently — almost condescendingly, Eric thought — “in this day and age, anybody can reverse engineer a recipe. Once the show is out there and business picks up, every stay-at-home mom with a blog will figure it out and start posting their copycat recipes. Do you really want to give them the opportunity to go viral when you’re the real deal?”

“That recipe has been in my family for generations and none of the church ladies have been able to figure it out,” Eric said stubbornly. “I doubt a mommy blogger from Wisconsin is suddenly going to crack the code.”

“There may even be a book deal involved, if this thing takes off,” Chad tried. “And I have a feeling it will, Eric. You’ve got the right look, and your accent is so charming. The camera loves you. You’ll be a star.”

Dinner ended with nothing having been decided, and the sex afterward was disappointing despite the California king and Italian-made sheets. In the last of the New York meetings, Eric formally turned down the offer.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” Chad said. “I think we would have worked well together.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Eric said sincerely. “But you’re asking for more than I can give.”

“What would change your mind?” Chad asked.

And that was when Eric knew. He didn’t need a slice of pie to tell him Chad wasn’t the love of his life. The love of his life, he was sure, would _listen_ to him.

“I don’t think I’m gonna change my mind, honey,” Eric said, not a bit sad that Chad and his offer were off the table.

“Well, if you do, you have my number.” Chad raised his eyebrow suggestively and Eric resolved never to call him, no matter how nice that borrowed apartment had been.


	2. Chapter 2

Jack Zimmermann did not believe in fate, or destiny, or meant-to-be. If the guiding hand of fate actually governed his life, he would be playing in the NHL right now, on track to win his third or fourth Stanley Cup as his father had by his age.

Instead, he’d wound up on a bathroom floor at 18, flamed out and preferring death over destiny.

Therapy had taught him that he was in control of his life, that he had to own his role in what had happened. He could only blame it on his parents, his anxiety, the press, the hockey industrial complex, for so long. At the end of the day, he’d made the decision to swallow the pills. At the end of the day, he had to choose getting better.

It was a choice he’d made every day since. So no, Jack didn’t believe in fate. He believed in things that were real. What was real was that Jack Zimmermann, former hockey prodigy who was (it had been foretold) destined to do great things, was a traveling salesman in … Jack glanced at the map displayed on his rental car’s GPS … Madison, Georgia.

The Georgia assignment was temporary. Jack had been assigned to his company’s New England territory for the past decade, venturing away from the Eastern seaboard only for the company’s annual conference in Vegas or Chicago or wherever the higher ups decided to host a weekend comprised of equal parts motivational speeches and debauchery. But last week Jack’s colleague Johnson had abruptly quit to hike the Continental Divide Trail and asked specifically that Jack take over his territory. So here he was, on his first trip out to meet with his new clients and get settled in his new place.

Jack had vague childhood memories of the American South, most associated with the arenas and hotels he’d spent time in the few times he’d accompanied his father on roadies as a small child. He had a clearer memory of the time his mother filmed a made-for-TV movie in Atlanta the summer he was eleven. By then, his life was all-hockey, all the time, but he and Papa had taken time off to visit during the week of American Independence Day. He remembered his week in Georgia as sticky and uncomfortable, most of it spent floating in the hotel’s pool or ordering smoothies and soft serve from its outdoor cafe in a desperate attempt to cool off. He’d been glad to get home to the chill of the ice rink, with its familiar artificial lighting and manufactured ice smell.

The people had been nice, though. There’d been a warmth to them, a kindness he’d appreciated as the shy, anxious son of two icons in their respective fields who had recently become aware of the way people — those known to him and total strangers alike — had begun to talk about him. The memory of that kindness was why he’d agreed to take on this new territory.

He’d gotten in early enough this afternoon that he’d had time to meet with a few clients before checking into his Atlanta-area motel. His accounts ran the gamut, from celebrated trendy and high end restaurants to hole-in-the wall mom and pop joints topopular fast food franchises.

Jack’s temporary home was the Madison Motor Inn, Johnson’s preferred lodging when he was in the Atlanta area. When Jack had asked him why he didn’t stay in Atlanta proper, Johnson had replied with something about how it didn’t fit the narrative. Jack knew better than to question Johnson’s logic; he _had_ been a goalie, after all. And Jack wasn’t fussy. As long as he had a bed and a place to work out, he’d be fine. At any rate, he thought as he booked the room on his corporate credit card, it would save the company money.

Now, as he pulled his rental car into the motel’s empty parking lot, he wondered if he shouldn’t have just gone with the Embassy Suites in Atlanta. He left his carryon and garment bag in the car while he checked in.

“Here ya go, hon,” the woman behind the counter — Missy, according to the name tag fastened to her Madison Motor Inn polo shirt — said, handing Jack a nondescript key card. “That’ll get you into the gym and pool. Remember to wipe down all gym equipment when you’re through, or your gym privileges will be revoked. Also, there’s no alcohol allowed in the pool area. You don’t look like the type who’ll get in trouble for that, but I’m obligated to tell you anyway.”

Jack glanced outside at the pool just outside the office. Enclosed within a wrought iron fence and furnished with two sagging lounge chairs and a weathered plastic table that listed to one side, it was a far cry from the sparkling oasis he remembered from his childhood visit to Atlanta.

But Jack wasn’t here to use the pool. He took his things to his room and set his computer up at the desk (at least there was a desk), intending only to respond to emails from the junior employee who had taken over his territory in New England and look over Johnson’s notes about the accounts he’d be visiting tomorrow. He didn’t plan on working well into the evening, and was alerted to the late hour by sudden hunger pangs.

Some coffee- and grease-stained menus in the desk drawer advertised pizza delivery and Chinese food, neither of which sounded appetizing at the moment. With a weary sigh, Jack stood and stretched, resigned to the fact that he’d have to go back out. He grabbed his car keys and briefcase, a little wary about leaving his work-issued laptop in the motel room.

“Excuse me, can you recommend someplace nearby for dinner?” Jack asked, popping his head into the office on his way to the parking lot.

Missy looked up from her magazine. “We have a deal with the pizza and Chinese places down the street if you mention you’re staying here. Pizza will waive your delivery fee. Chinese will throw in a free order of egg rolls.”

“Ah, thanks, but I was thinking someplace where I can sit down and read?”

Missy brightened. “Oh, then you’ll want to head on down to the Pie Palace. It’s real popular around here. Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives did an episode there!”

Jack remembered the name from Johnson’s notes, only because his mostly illegible scribbles had included the _very_ legible “BEST damn pie you’ll ever have.” He thanked Missy and headed out, following the general directions she’d given him.

Even without the directions, Madison Pie Palace would have been hard to miss. It was no hole in the wall, that was for sure. A tall neon sign loomed overhead, a throwback to a bygone era. In the early dusk it illuminated the parking lot, casting it in red and blue hues. The whole effect was somewhat magical; for the briefest of moments Jack was thrown back to the time his parents had taken him to Disneyland and let him stay up well past his bedtime to watch the Electrical Parade. What he recalled from that moment were the colors, the sounds, the overwhelming warmth and feeling of safety he’d felt sitting on Papa’s strong shoulders, secure in the knowledge he wouldn’t let him fall.

Something about Madison Pie Palace brought those feelings to the surface.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/142939242@N03/49129326453/in/dateposted-public/)

“Welcome to Madison Pie Palace.” The man who greeted Jack was short and slight, and moved with a graceful ease Jack didn’t usually associate with waiters. He wore a somewhat soiled apron over jeans and a maroon t-shirt that had been emblazoned with the Madison Pie Palace logo, a replica of the neon sign outside. A small display over the register advertised the shirt as available for purchase in “Kids to XXXL, $15 or 2 for $25.” 

“Someone’ll be right with you,” the man added as Jack took in his surroundings. “Feel free to sit anywhere, if you’ll be dining in. If you just want some pie to go, Mama will take care of you up at the register.”

“Uh, thanks,” Jack said, choosing a bright pink vinyl-covered booth in the corner and taking a seat.

Jack had been in dozens of diners just like this one. They were all the same. Some tried to dress themselves up differently, trying nouveau hipster or retro vegan on for size, but at their core they were just like the one he now stood in. You could call it an avocado and arugula omelet and charge $15, but at the end of the day it was still an omelet.

There was no such omelet on the large, slightly sticky laminated menu the man handed Jack a few minutes later. Though breakfast was available all day, Madison Pie Palace served only the basics: Pancakes. A Denver omelet. French toast. Jack scanned the “Lunch and Dinner” side of the menu until his eyes settled on the chicken tenders platter.

It was simple nostalgia, he told himself as he gave the man his order. As he did, the man’s mouth quirked up into an almost-smile. He seemed to hesitate, like he was about to say something else, but instead turned on his heel to relay Jack’s order to the kitchen. Jack pulled his book out of his bag and settled in to read while he waited.

*

“Will you be having dessert today?” the waiter asked as he cleared Jack’s plate. Jack glanced at the display case up front, which held a variety of pies — according to Johnson they were the star of the show here, but Jack wasn’t in the mood for anything sweet tonight. When he declined something like disappointment briefly flitted across the waiter’s face, but he brightened again when Jack promised he’d be back. Of course he’d be back. The chicken tenders had been excellent.

As he walked back to the rental car, bag tucked under his arm, he was startled to hear footsteps running after him. “Excuse me!” a woman’s voice called out. “Sir, you forgot your pie!”

The blonde woman calling out him resembled the man who had taken his order and served him. Vaguely, Jack recalled seeing something on the menu about Madison Pie Palace being family-owned. This woman, older than Jack’s waiter, must be his mother.

“Euh, I think you must have the wrong customer,” Jack started. “I didn’t order pie.”

The woman winked. “On the house today, sweetheart.” She held out a pink pastry box, perfectly sized to hold a single slice of pie.

“Oh, uh, thanks,” Jack said, accepting the gift.

“You’re very welcome,” she said. “Please stop by again.”

Jack drove back to his motel, thinking about how dessert might be nice after all.


	3. Chapter 3

The first impression Eric had of Tall Blue Eyes was that he didn’t belong here.

He watched the white Toyota Prius pull into a spot on the far side of the parking lot and its driver hesitate before getting out and walking up to the door. His crisp white shirt, dress pants, and shiny shoes indicated he’d come from — or was on his way to — some sort of business meeting. Not their usual clientele but then, _Diners, Drive-ins and Dives_ had just done another feature. They’d been getting a lot of tourists on day trips from Atlanta.

The bells attached to the door jangled as the man walked in. He looked down at them, surprised, then up at Eric.

Eric hid his smile as he approached the man, who stood in the foyer a little uncertainly. Up close, he was even more handsome. His dress shirt highlighted, rather than concealed, his fit physique. And those dress pants! The man must have a good tailor, Eric thought admiringly, because pants with that waist-to-butt ratio were definitely not off-the-rack. Eric took a moment to compose himself and put on a professional face. “Welcome to Madison Pie Palace,” he said. “Someone’ll be right with you,”he added as the man took in his surroundings. “Feel free to sit anywhere, if you’ll be dining in. If you just want some pie to go, Mama will take care of you up at the register.”

“Uh, thanks.” The man carried a briefcase under one arm, like an old timey traveling salesman. He chose a corner booth and was reading a book by the time Eric arrived with a glass of water and the menu. He lowered his book and looked up at Eric with ice blue eyes that looked a little sad. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

Everything about him seemed designed to attract Eric, and it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that his eyes were so blue, or that his chest was so wide, or that his smile was not-quite-there when he ordered the chicken tenders platter, like he was remembering a private joke.

“Will you be having dessert today?” Eric asked as he cleared the man’s plate. “You cleaned your plate real good, but you must have left room for pie.”

Tall Blue Eyes looked up from his book, as if he’d forgotten he was in a restaurant rather than alone in his living room. “No thank you,” he said. “The food was delicious, though. I’ll be back.”

He left a generous tip, so Eric couldn’t really complain.

*

Tall Blue Eyes returned a week later, but not to eat.

Mama usually met with the account manager from the restaurant supply company, but Mama had a migraine that morning and asked Eric to meet with him instead. Eric signed internally and mentally rearranged his day. He didn’t exactly mind this part of the job, but it wasn’t his favorite, either. At least their account manager was friendly and efficient.

Except it wasn’t Johnson who strode through the door at 10 a.m. It was Tall Blue Eyes, looking just as awkward as he had the first time he visited.

“It’s you,” Eric said, apparently just as awkward. “Did you change your mind about the pie?”

Tall Blue Eyes huffed out a laugh, which pleased Eric. “Ah, not really? I’m Jack Zimmermann, with Restaurant Select. I have a 10 a.m. meeting with Suzanne.”

“You’re the restaurant supply meeting!” Eric said in surprise. “Johnson … ?”

“Is no longer with the company,” Tall Blue Eyes — _Jack_ — said. “I’ve been temporarily assigned to his territory.”

“Oh, well! Welcome to Madison Pie Palace. My mother usually meets with Johnson when he comes in, but she’s a little under the weather today so you’ll be talking to me. Why don’t you have a seat in that corner booth and I’ll bring you a cup of coffee.”

Jack nodded and headed to the booth he’d sat in a week earlier while Eric quickly poured a cup of coffee. “Do you take cream and sugar, Mr. Zimmermann?” he asked.

“Black is fine,” Jack said. He had an accent Eric couldn’t quite place.

“Black it is!” Eric poured another mug for himself and carried both over to the booth. “So Johnson quit?” he asked as he took a seat on the other side. “Or … ?”

“He moved to California,” Jack said, with no further elaboration.

“Well, good for him. And you’ll be taking over for him? You don’t sound like you’re from around here.”

“Canada, actually. But I was — _am_ — based in New England. Johnson told our boss I should fill in for him until they can hire somebody permanently. I’ve been flying back and forth these past few weeks.”

“That sounds like quite the load,” Eric said. “But I’m glad you’re here. Welcome to Georgia. Hope the heat hasn’t gotten to you yet.”

“It’s a little warm,” Jack agreed, looking down at his steaming cup of coffee. “Coffee may not have been the best idea.”

“I can get you some sweet tea,” Eric offered. “Or —” he added, noticing the look of hesitation that crossed Jack’s face — “regular iced tea?”

Jack smiled. “That sounds perfect.”

Eric ran back to the kitchen. When he returned with the tea, Jack had already taken papers and catalogs out of his briefcase and spread them over the table. “Johnson left a note in your file that said your orders are usually pretty straightforward. I went into your account and it looks like your mom places the same supply order every month, and bumps it up during the holiday season. Otherwise he just stops by once in a while if he wants to show you a new product or if there’s a problem.”

Eric nodded. “That sounds about right. Like I said, Mama handles the ordering, but she does most of it online. Johnson used to come in, but it was usually for a slice of pie when he was on the road.”

“Right. The pie. I heard you serve that here,” Jack said, deadpan. It took Eric a few seconds to realize Jack was joking, and then he couldn’t help the giggle that escaped.

“I’m sure you have other meetings today, so I’ll pack up a slice to go,” Eric said, standing again.

“Oh, it’s okay,” Jacksaid, beginning to pull his papers together. “I’d have to leave it in the car all day.”

“Maybe next time, then.”

“Maybe next time. Thank you for the tea, Eric. And the coffee. I’m on my way to a coffee shop now, actually.”

“Ground Control?” Eric guessed. Jack nodded. “Say hi to Mr. And Mrs. Hansen for me. I went to high school with their daughter.”

“Will do,” Jack said. “And if you can just let your mom know that I’ll be handling the account for the next few months, I’d appreciate it. She can get in touch with me any time. I’ll leave a couple cards. Cell or text is the best way to reach me; I’m not in the office very often.”

Eric looked at the bold, black letters on the card: _Jack Zimmermann_. He stuck one up on the bulletin board in the little office where Mama placed her orders, and pocketed the other.

He supposed it didn’t matter that Jack hadn’t even asked to look at the pie menu. Jack Zimmermann was entirely too pretty to ever think twice about him.

*

Jack Zimmermann became a regular at Madison Pie Palace.

Mama liked to say she was the first to notice he had a habit of showing up just before closing time, but Eric had been silently keeping track of his visits and preferences. He always ordered the chicken tenders platter with a side of ketchup, always cleaned his plate, always declined the dessert menu, and always left a $10 tip on his $12 meal.

“Why is the apple pie the daily special?” Jack asked, pointing at the Daily Specials card Eric had given him with the menu. His eyebrows knit together in confusion. “Usually the special of the day is something that isn’t served every day, but it’s been the special every time.”

“Well, that’s because the apple is special,” Eric explained, knowing he wasn’t really explaining at all.

“I guess that makes sense,” Jack said, turning his eyes back to the menu. Eric knew he would pretend to read it and order the chicken tenders anyway.

“You go ahead and take a look at that while I get the drinks for Table Four,” Eric said, enjoying the game. When he returned it was as he expected: Jack ordered the chicken tenders platter with a side of ketchup.

“Can I talk you into a slice of pie for dessert?” he asked as he cleared Jack’s clean plate. “Since you seemed interested earlier?”

“Ah, not tonight,” Jack said. “I have to be on my way.

“I can make it to go,” Eric offered, and tried not to feel crushed when Jack smiled apologetically and shook his head.

“Maybe next time.” Jack carefully marked his place in his book and put it in his briefcase. “Thanks, Eric. See you soon.” His kind, slight smile buoyed Eric’s spirits just a little. Even if Jack Zimmermann wasn’t The One, he was turning out to be Eric’s favorite customer.

*

“Do you like working with your family?” Jack asked one evening as Eric refilled his iced tea. “It seems like you’d all have to get along pretty well to work like this every day.”

“Well,” Eric said, helping himself to the seat across from Jack (it was slow tonight, he told himself, he could afford to sit for a bit), “it helps that Mama is my best friend.” Immediately, he felt the warmth of embarrassment on his face. Men who were creeping ever closer toward 30 weren’t supposed to admit that their _mother_ was their best friend.

But Jack didn’t laugh or subtly signal his discomfort, like Chad had the time Eric had told him he told Mama everything. He just nodded and said, “That’s nice.”

“It is,” Eric agreed. And it was.

“What about your parents?” Eric asked. “Do y’all get along?” For all he knew about Jack Zimmermann — his schedule, his order, his reading preferences — he didn’t really _know_ him.

“Better, now,” Jack said, smiling. “We had a rough road when I was a kid.” He didn’t elaborate, so Eric didn’t push.

“What do they do?”

“Ah.” Jack smiled like he found it humorous. “They own an ice rink.”

“Well, of course they do.”

“They didn’t always. Papa played in the NHL and Maman was a model and did a little acting. They bought the rink to keep Papa busy in his retirement.”

Eric let this new bit of information about Jack sink in. If his parents had been a professional athlete and a model, Jack probably didn’t need this job. Or, maybe more accurately, Jack should have a fancier job somewhere else. 

“So what’s your dad do at the rink?”

“He drives the Zamboni.”

Eric covered his mouth so Mama and Moomaw, in the kitchen and no doubt eavesdropping, wouldn’t hear his laughter. “Mr. Zimmermann, I know your dad doesn’t drive the Zamboni.”

“He does!” Jack insisted. “The local news did a story on him and everything! He said it’s the best press coverage he’s ever gotten. Here, I’ll send you the link.”

“That’s okay,” Eric said, “I believe you. It must be nice to have a rink in the family. Do you ever get back out there?”

“Papa likes to play a little one-on-one when I visit. Sometimes he invites some of his old friends, guys he’s known for a long time. We wait until after hours.” Jack seemed to relax a bit as he talked about the rink and his parents, who seemed down to earth despite their wealth.

“And it’s just you and your parents?” Eric asked after Jack finished telling a particularly funny story about his father and a goose facing off on a frozen pond. “Nobody —” he willed his voice to stay steady — “special back in Boston?”

“It’s hard to meet people when I’m on the road so much,” Jack said simply.

“Why, Mr. Zimmermann, I don’t think that’s true at all. Seems to me you must be meeting people all the time.”

“Ah, well … you’ve got me there,” Jack said with a smile. “I guess what I mean is, it’s hard to maintain a relationship when I’m on the road so much. My friends keep trying to set me up with their friends but I’m away from home so often, the last thing I want to do on a Friday or Saturday night is go out. My ex always wanted to go out on Friday nights. It got to be a lot. ”

“I know what you mean. I wish I could just meet somebody I like and just … skip to the part where we spend Friday nights cuddled up the couch with a movie and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s.”

That got a laugh out of Jack. “Does that mean you don’t have anybody special at home, either?”

“If only.” Eric couldn’t help the little sigh that escaped. “I’m hopelessly single, though it’s not for lack of trying. Truth be told, I think I want it too much.” That was an understatement, but he couldn’t very well tell Jack about the curse. “I think I must be a romantic at heart,” he finally said. “I just keep waiting for the man of my dreams to walk through that door. I’m starting to think it’s not gonna happen for me.” There. That was vague enough without giving his secret away.

“You’re, what? Thirty? If that? Eric, there’s plenty of time for you to meet somebody.”

Eric raised an eyebrow. “In this town, Mr. Zimmermann?”

Jack looked around the restaurant, mostly empty tables with the exception of one table of AARP-card-holders and a booth filled with noisy teenagers. “Point taken.”

Sometimes — especially now that Jack Zimmermann had become something of a regular — Eric wondered what his life would be like if he’d stopped waiting for The One to walk through the door and trust himself to choose what he wanted.

If he weren’t bound by the curse, he might choose — well, he might choose somebody like Jack Zimmermann. And if he weren’t here waiting around for his true love to come in and sweep him off his feet, he might have chosen a different path entirely. Nothing too crazy, of course. Eric didn’t think he’d last long if he couldn’t bake for a living. But maybe, he thought, he’d have chosen something a little easier.

“And you’ve just reminded me,” Eric said as he stood, “I do need to get back to work. I give those kids two minutes before they start pouring salt and sugar into their water glasses and daring each other to drink it.”

Jack made a face. “Good call. I played hockey most of my life. We used to get pretty wild when we went out to eat.”

Eric looked at Jack, in his starched shirt and gray dress pants, and marveled that anybody so buttoned-up could ever do anything that might be considered _wild_. “Yes, I’m sure you did, Mr. Zimmermann.”

Jack’s eyes looked sad again and Eric wondered what he’d said had made them that way. For all their friendly banter, he didn’t really _know_ Jack. Immediately, he wondered what he could do to make that sadness disappear.

“Can I getcha a slice of pie to go?” Eric asked. Jack would say no. He always said no. But it was still fun to ask.

“Ah, no.” The corners of Jack’s mouth turned upward, just barely. “Not tonight.”

“One of these days, Mr. Zimmermann …”

One of these days … what? Jack would try the pie and fall madly in love with Eric? The longer Eric waited, the more ridiculous it sounded.

“One of these days?” Jack raised an eyebrow and Eric could almost imagine he was flirting with him.

Eric swept Jack’s empty plate and coffee mug up and balanced them in one arm. “Oh, you know,” he said, leaving the thought unfinished. “Have a good evening, Jack.”

“See you tomorrow, Bittle,” Jack said as he gathered his things.

Maybe Jack wasn’t his soulmate, but at least he was predictable.


	4. Chapter 4

Jack’s condo smelled funny.

He’d read somewhere, once, that the way your house smells when you return from a trip is the way it smells to everyone else all the time. You just spend so much time there that the scent becomes normal. It was like the rattle of the air conditioning unit in his motel room that had kept him awake for the first few nights he’d been there, but that he now had a hard time sleeping without.

This, though. This wasn’t the way Jack’s house usually smelled. The weed-and-patchouli-tinged air definitely heralded the presence of Shitty. He mentally cursed himself for ever giving Shitty a key and hoped his best friend was, at the very least, fully clothed.

“Brah!” Shitty greeted on cue as Jack dropped his bag on the floor and closed the door behind him. Before he could take another step inside, he was strong-armed into one of Shitty’s trademark bear hugs.

“Nice robe,” Jack said, nodding at the too-short garment Shitty had belted over a pair of boxers covered in pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio’s face.

“Thanks. Found it in the closet. Your mom has good taste.”

“Gross.”

“It's Burberry.”

“It smells like weed. My mother is going to kill you.”

“Your mother would never. She loves me like her own.”

The thing was, Shitty was right. Jack’s parents had been so grateful when Shitty had latched onto Jack their freshman year at Samwell, forcing him into a friendship that was neither tinged with shades of competition and jealousy nor based on proximity to Jack and his famous family. Shitty was curious about Jack’s past, but he was equally curious about Jack’s favorite movies and his position on the ERA. And he was the first to shut down anybody — teammates, opponents, Samwell’s own gossip rag — who spread rumors about Jack’s past or said he’d only been given his spot on the hockey team because his parents had paid off the administration.

Jack often wondered what would have happened if he’d gone into the NHL like he was supposed to. There was no room in that life for his free spirited best friend, or for Lardo, their former team manager who was both Shitty’s longterm girlfriend and Jack’s other best friend.

“Thought you’d gone all Southern on us,” Shitty chided. “You’ve been gone forever.”

Jack had, point of fact, been gone for only three weeks. But his usual trips were day trips, occasionally extending to one or two nights if he was in New York, so he supposed three weeks was a lot.

It hadn’t felt like a lot. Part of it was the novelty of being in a new place and the challenge of getting up to speed with his new clients. A bigger part, he knew, was that for the first time since he’d begun this job, he’d made a friend.

Sort of. Maybe. He enjoyed his dinners at Madison Pie Palace, and as much as he told himself it was about the food, he knew it was really about the blond-haired, brown-eyed waiter who always — if he had time — sat down to share a cup of coffee with Jack as the diner was clearing out and his shift was ending.

Jack suspected their conversations delayed closing, but Eric never kicked him out so he himself could get home. He seemed to genuinely enjoy talking with Jack and in just a few weeks, they’d already developed their own inside jokes. Eric never let Jack leave without trying to tempt him into dessert, and Jack always (politely) refused, enjoying the way it seemed to fluster Eric. The slice of chocolate cream pie Suzanne Bittle had given him that first night had been almost sinfully delicious, and Jack knew it was a slippery slope. If he gave in now, he might never leave.

He shoved that thought aside when he heard commotion coming from the kitchen. Lardo stood in front of the oven, wresting a burnt slice of lasagna out of a foil tray. Her short hair, a deep shade of blue (it had been purple the last time he’d seen her), was pulled into a wispy ponytail and she wore one of Jack’s old SMH shirts (dress-length on her, though it was a tight fit on Jack) over a pair of black leggings.

“Sorry it’s burnt,” she apologized. “Shits wanted to go get some ice cream while it was cooking and we kind of forgot about it.”

“Yeah, maybe next time don’t smoke in my house,” Jack groused. He didn’t think it was too much to ask that his friends respect his household rules since he provided them a free place to stay whenever he was out of town for more than a few days. The two were currently living in Lardo’s parents’ basement while they renovated the old house Shitty’s grandmother had left them. 

Shitty’s trust fund, Jack knew, would have provided enough for them to live on in the meantime, but Shitty had a thing about taking money from his father, whose politics and business dealings he found repugnant. So, they lived on their salaries as a public defender and a middle school art teacher and Shitty used the trust fund to make regular donations to nonprofits his father abhorred. 

Shitty and Lardo were the best people Jack knew.

“Technically, we were on the balcony,” Shitty said. 

“Don’t do it on the balcony, either.”

“Aw, Dad, you’re no fun,” Shitty whined as they took their seats at the table.

“So how’s life in the Peach State?” Lardo asked in an exaggerated — and horribly inaccurate — Southern drawl as she passed around a plate of garlic bread.

“Humid.” Jack took a bite of lasagna and chewed while his friends waited for him to elaborate. He swallowed and shrugged. “It’s nice.”

“Nice?” Shitty asked, incredulous, and before he could launch into a tirade about gerrymandering and voter suppression, Lardo saved them all by stuffing a piece of garlic bread into his mouth.

“I like the pictures,” she told Jack. “The ones you put on Instagram.”

“Oh, yeah. Thanks.” Photography was a hobby Jack had picked up after taking a class in college. He didn’t think he was very good at it, but every once in a while he got lucky with a particularly good shot. The other night, the light had been just right when he’d arrived at Madison Pie Palace at dusk. He’d spontaneously snapped a picture of the retro neon sign outside, and a few more of the diner’s interior. He supposed those were the pictures Lardo was talking about.

“And the waiter?” Lardo winked. “Cuuuute.”

There were a few pictures of Eric Bittle in the set: one of him standing at the milkshake machine, one of him smiling at a customer while plating a slice of pie at the counter, one taken as he poured Jack’s coffee.

That last photo was a closeup, and Jack had perhaps lingered on Bittle’s arms and hands a little too long as he’d framed the shot, but he liked the way it had turned out.

“His family owns the place,” Jack told them, strangely offended his friends might have mistaken Bittle for just a waiter. “He does all the baking.”

“So cute _and_ talented. Got it.” Lardo winked, Shitty took another bite of garlic bread, and they seemed do that thing they did where they somehow decided, without speaking, that they’d let Jack talk. But Jack didn’t want to talk, so he swiped another piece of bread from the plate, effectively changing the subject.

“How’s the house coming along?” he asked. 

“You should see the stuff Lardo found last weekend,” Shitty told him. “They’re tearing down this old church to build an Amazon office and she was able to get some stained glass and a door.”

“Kind of ironic, since Shits got arrested protesting that,” Lardo said. “But yeah, that place was a goldmine.”

Lardo was using recycled and found materials to renovate their house, making it an inhabitable work of art. The kitchen floor was made from old bowling alley lanes, vintage pink bathroom tile had been salvaged from a tear down in the same neighborhood, the door from an old bank vault hid the pantry. 

The best part, according to Shitty, was that his father was ready to “shit a brick over the way we’ve defaced his family home.” Jack simply thought it was cool. He could only guess at what the newly procured stained glass would become, but he knew Lardo would use it well.

Jack ate three pieces of lasagna while Shitty and Lardo did most of the talking, then begged off dessert — Shitty had generously left a serving of ice cream in the container he’d purchased earlier — with the intention of going to bed, but they wound up in the living room, where Shitty and Lardo continued to catch him up on everything that had happened while he’d been away.

An hour later, Shitty was passed out on the floor, empty carton of ice cream by his side. Jack and Lardo sat on the couch, Lardo leaning against one arm with her feet tucked under Jack’s legs. A bowl of peanut butter M&Ms was balanced on her knees. The sound of Shitty’s snoring and the _SNL_ rerun he’d fallen asleep in front of provided background noise for the sort of conversation Jack only ever had with her.

“You’re quiet tonight,” Lardo observed. “Quieter than usual, I mean.”

“Reentry. You know how it is.”

“Bullshit.” Lardo dug her foot into Jack’s thigh. “You met somebody in Georgia and your mind is still back there. It’s that guy, right? The waiter?”

Lardo was the first person Jack came out to, way back in his junior year at Samwell. Jack couldn’t remember when, exactly, he’d found out Lardo was bisexual, just that when he’d met her she was still with her high school boyfriend and by the end of that year she had “a thing” with a girl on the soccer team. By his junior and her sophomore year, Lardo knew him in only the way a team manager could: she kept track of his tape preferences, always had his favorite flavor of protein bar on hand, and knew not to put him in a hotel room near the elevator. Little intimacies that made him feel like he could trust her with his biggest secret.

They’d been studying in his room at the beginning of his junior year when he brought it up. Lardo lived in the dorms but spent a lot of time in the hockey house Jack and some of the other guys lived in. She usually hung out with Shitty, but knew Jack’s room was available when she needed some quiet downtime. It was his refuge away from the Haus’ chaos, too.

“So, euh, Shitty said you’re going to Winter Screw with that drama guy,” Jack had said. “Did you and soccer chick …?”

“Done,” Lardo replied, not looking up from her sketch pad. “She wanted, like, a relationship. I was in a relationship for almost two years. I’m just here to have fun. Plus, I’m doing that study abroad thing next semester and I definitely don’t want a long distance thing.” She made a face, though Jack wasn’t sure if it was in response to the concept of long distance or the drawing on her pad.

“But you do like guys,” Jack pressed, working toward his point. “Not just girls.”

Lardo set her pencil down. “Oh god. You aren’t … Dude, you aren’t coming onto me, are you? No offense, you’re one of my best bros, but I don’t like you like that.”

“No!” Jack stammered, embarrassed. “I mean, you know you like guys and girls. It’s not … one or the other. Right?”

“It’s like …” Lardo balanced her pad on her knees and looked up at Jack. “One time Shitty and I got really high and we couldn’t decide if we wanted burritos or fro yo. Like, how you can you choose between those? They’re both delicious. We ended up getting fro yo because it was closer than Taco Bell, but I totally would have had a burrito, you know? That’s kind of how I feel about people.”

“And you’ve always known? That you like both?”

“Chyeah. I don’t know when I knew, but I definitely knew by high school. I usually went out with boys because there weren’t a lot of out girls at my school, but I didn’t spend a lot of time questioning it. I was the weird art girl, it was kind of expected.”

“It’s not usually expected of hockey players,” Jack said.

“Yeah, it was harder for the athletes,” Lardo agreed. “There was one guy on the soccer team who … Wait, did you just come out to me?”

“Euh …”

“Zimmermann, you asshole!” Lardo lunged at Jack, knocking her pad and Jack’s water bottle off the bed. “Were you just planning to slip that in all casual? Dude!”

Jack shrugged. “I’ve never told anybody. It’s never mattered.”

Lardo raised an eyebrow. “Does it now?”

Jack thought about Schuyler, the sophomore who sat next to him in his biology class. He was on the cross-country team, and something about the way he’d smiled a little crookedly that first day and asked Jack if he wanted to be lab partners had made his heart speed up a little. Maybe he wanted to know what else made him smile like that.

“I think I’ve always known too,” he said instead. It was true. In Juniors, when he’d been hell-bent on burning his life down, he’d made out with pretty much anything with a pulse. His parents, thinking about his future in the league, had advised discretion during a particularly mortifying family meeting, but later when they thought he wasn’t listening he’d heard his mother say, “At least we don’t have to worry about an unplanned pregnancy as long as he’s fucking other boys.”

“Small comfort,” his father had agreed. “They’ll tear him apart if this gets out.”

But Jack wasn’t in the league, and nobody at Samwell cared who he dated. The hockey gossip mill might eventually find out about it but the story of Bad Bob Zimmermann’s bisexual son would be a minor story, unable to compete with actual league news for long. He could ask the gorgeous runner with the crooked smile to Winter Screw if he wanted.

They did end up going to Winter Screw together, and while some of Jack’s friends had been surprised, they hadn’t been anything but supportive. Jack and Schuyler dated for the rest of his junior year but the relationship seemed to have run its course by the time they went home for the summer. The following fall he met Camilla at a Samwell captains mixer. They were together for four years before parting ways.

Jack hadn’t dated a lot since that breakup. He knew the reputation people who traveled for work as often as he did had. Some guys had a woman in every city, ready to welcome them when they rolled into town. Jack supposed he could also have somebody in every city, but that wasn’t a game he was interested in playing. Casual hookups weren’t his thing. And long distance relationships weren’t either. He dated a little, usually Shitty and Lardos’ friends who tended to be artists or lawyers. But he hadn’t been serious about anybody since Camilla.

He used the excuse that he was on the road a lot, that it was too hard to start something when he couldn’t be fully present for a partner. His father would wink knowingly and tell him he’d change his mind when he met somebody who mattered, that the text messages and late night Skype sessions wouldn’t feel like an obligation, but would become something he’d look forward to. Jack always scoffed, thinking about the necessary give-and-take of a relationship and then the minutiae that made up a life on the road: dozens of podcast episodes he listened to each week, pictures taken in different cities, workouts completed in crappy fitness rooms, “local specials” served in every small town diner he visited.

Until now, he hadn’t met anybody he thought would be interested in his dispatches from his day-to-day life.

 _Until now_.

Now, he glanced at his phone, where a text message from Eric Bittle seemed to glow extra bright:

**Eric Bittle - Madison Pie Palace**

_Did you make it home alright?_

“Is that him?” Lardo demanded. “It is, isn’t it?”

“Do you think it’s stupid to start something with a guy who lives a thousand miles away?”

“Dude. It took me almost a decade to realize I couldn’t live without that one,” Lardo said, flicking a blue M&M at Shitty’s head. He rolled over onto his side but didn’t wake. “I don’t think I’m the best person to ask for relationship advice.”

“But you knew,” Jack pressed. “All those people before Shitty were different.”

“I knew I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with them,” Lardo said. “Hey, remember that clingy soccer chick my freshman year? And then the guy I met in Kenya who eventually dropped out to become a silent monk?”

“I remember the vegan who came to visit you and almost passed out when he saw our plates at team breakfast.”

“Same guy!” Lardo crowed. On the floor, Shitty grunted. Lardo lowered her voice. “Look, I think part of me knew from the beginning that it was Shitty. It was always going to be Shitty. I just resisted because, well, _look_ at that. Old money dude bro with deep Republican roots and the very misguided belief that he’s just the white man to save the world? No thanks.”

Jack nodded. A lot of people had that reaction to Shitty, before they got to know him.

“But when you know, you know. Shitty and I were meant to be. Took us a while to get here, but here we are.” Lardo lobbed another M&M at Shitty, making little victory signs with her fingers when it landed in his mouth. “I love that idiot.” She rolled her eyes in exasperation, but Jack recognized the love and affection in that look as well.

Jack had never felt like that about anybody, not even Camilla, and he sometimes wondered if he ever would. Now, he thought about Eric Bittle’s hands wrapped around a mug of coffee, his kind eyes. Hands he wanted to feel on his body, eyes he wouldn’t mind waking up to.

“Here,” she said, passing the candy over to Jack. “Take these before I eat all of them. I’m going to go crash in the guest room.”

“Want some help dragging him to bed, or should we leave him here?” Jack asked, getting up from the couch and wincing as both of his knees cracked.

“Leave ’im. He’ll be fine. Sometimes it’s nice to have the bed to myself, you know?”

Jack had spent three years waking up to find a stoned Shitty in his bed. He knew.

“Tell lover boy I said hi,” Lardo added, winking at Jack before she disappeared down the hall.

Jack glanced down at his phone, where the message from Eric Bittle waited, unanswered. Jack never texted his clients about anything that wasn’t work related, but after spending almost every night with Eric for the past three weeks, he missed their easy conversation.

 _My friends made a frozen lasagna to welcome me home,_ he typed on the way to his room. He tossed the phone onto his bed and undressed, changing into one of the old Samwell University t-shirts he always slept in. By the time he’d brushed his teeth and splashed some water on his face, Eric had replied.

**Eric Bittle - Madison Pie Palace**

_Oh honey, no! We don’t normally do lasagna, but you let me know in advance before your next trip out here and I’ll fix you up right._ ****

**Jack Zimmermann**

_Ha ha. I really don’t mind the chicken tenders._

**Eric Bittle - Madison Pie Palace**

_I know you don’t! But man cannot live on chicken tenders alone. Let me make you lasagna._

_Or pie._

**Jack Zimmermann**

_Ha ha. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?_

**Eric Bittle - Madison Pie Palace**

_It is award-winning pie, Jack._

**Jack Zimmermann**

_Award-winning, eh? Why didn’t you tell me. Oh wait you did. Once. Or twice. Maybe every time I’ve eaten at your restaurant._

**Eric Bittle - Madison Pie Palace**

_Do you mock all of your clients like this? Who can I report this abuse to?_

**Jack Zimmermann**

_Only the ones I like._

It took a very long time for Eric to reply, the bubbles on Jack’s phone appearing and disappearing. Finally,

**Eric Bittle - Madison Pie Palace**

_Let me know when you’re coming back and I’ll have something special ready for you._

This time Jack took his time replying.

**Jack Zimmermann**

_I will._

_Goodnight, Bittle._

**Eric Bittle - Madison Pie Palace**

_Goodnight, Mr. Zimmermann._

Eric signed off with a kissy face emoji, which Jack chose not to read anything into. It was cute, and seemed like something Eric probably did with all of his friends.

The problem, Jack realized, was that he wasn’t really interested in being _just_ Eric Bittle’s friend.


	5. Chapter 5

“Darn it all,” Eric grumbled as he attempted to stuff the bouquet of three dozen roses that had just arrived into the dumpster out in the alley. It was filled to the brim, and their trash pickup wasn’t for another day. And now it was beginning to rain. He wrestled with it, valiantly trying to wedge it in between two black trash bags, but all that produced was a large hole in one of the bags where one of the stems stabbed it clean through.

“Oh, fuck it!” Eric cried, flinging the flowers to the ground. A used whipped cream canister and an old coffee filter still full of grounds fell from the bin and landed at his feet.

“Looks like it had it coming to ‘em,” a voice behind Eric said.

Eric startled. Slowly, he turned around, and came face to face with Jack Zimmermann, who had left 20 minutes earlier. Jack had arrived back in Madison earlier in the week after two weeks back in his home base of Boston. When Eric had chirped him about the South getting under his skin, he’d just shrugged and said something about still not having a permanent replacement for Johnson.

“Jack!” he yelped, embarrassed to be seen in such a state. “Back so soon?”

Jack’s tie was undone, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. There was a streak of something — dirt? — on his left pant leg. He didn’t look as disheveled as Eric knew _he_ must look after fighting with the trash and losing, but it might be a close contest.

Jack’s facial expressions were subtle, but Eric was beginning to be able to tell them apart. The slight upward quirk of his mouth told Eric he was amused. “Eric.”

“Lord, I’m sorry you have to see me like this,” Eric said, brushing coffee grounds from his arm. Vaguely, he noticed a scratch running from elbow to wrist on the underside of his arm that must be from the roses. It stung.

“Any particular reason you’re throwing away those flowers?” Jack asked, that amused little smile growing just a bit.

“Ugh.” Eric kicked at the bouquet. A few petals fell off. “Chad sent them.”

“Chad?”

“My ex. Sort of. It’s a long story. Seems to think it’ll change my mind.”

“I’m assuming it didn’t?”

Eric slowly shook his head. “Not in the slightest.”

The rain was really beginning to come down. Now, on top of being covered with garbage, Eric was wet. “What’re you doing back here?” he asked again. “Did you forget something?”

“Flat tire.” Jack shrugged endearingly. His eyes caught on Eric’s arm and he grabbed it. “You’re bleeding,” he said, pointing out the pinpricks of blood beginning to sprout along the scratch.

“You’re wet,” Eric replied. “Come on, let’s get you inside and warmed up. We can call a tow truck.”

Jack went into the restroom and changed into a Madison Pie Palace t-shirt while Eric put on a fresh pot of coffee and called Max, an old high school classmate whose family owned the local towing company.

“Your tow will be here in a half hour,” he said as Jack walked out, wet shirt balled up in his hands. Immediately, he realized he should have given Jack a shirt in the next size up. It wasn’t that this one was too small, more that it was … just right. It clung to him in all the right ways, highlighting his broad chest and firm biceps. Eric knew Jack tried to squeeze in workouts whenever he could; he talked often about finding local running trails and lifting weights in his motel’s limited gym. But his staid, slightly stuffy work shirts, though well-tailored, only hinted at what this t-shirt emphasized. Now Eric’s imagination worked overtime, wondering what Jack would look like out of the shirt entirely.

“Stop it,” he told himself, handing Jack a trash bag for his wet shirt. To Jack, he said, “We can get you a ride share back to your place once Max gets here. Or, I can drop you off, if you don’t mind waiting while I finish closing up.”

“I don’t mind waiting,” Jack said. “I can help.”

So Eric put Jack to work wiping down the table tops while he swept and loaded the dishwasher.

“So who’s Chad, and why do you hate his flowers?” Jack asked as they worked.

Eric grimaced. “I told you it was a long story,” he warned, giving Jack an out if he wanted it. The poor guy hadn’t come to hear about his relationship woes.

“I’ve got time.”

So Eric told him the whole story, including the part where Chad got in touch every few months to see if he’d changed his mind about the web series. The flowers were a recent development. The first time they’d shown up, Mama had scolded him for throwing them away because roses were still roses, even if they were from a no-good recipe-stealing Yankee, and they would have looked nice on the tables.

“He sounds kind of sleazy,” Jack said, when Eric finished his story.

“That about sums him up,” Eric said. “He was a lot of fun, but I never really knew if he wanted me or the idea of me. I think he thought I was his ticket to bigger and better things. And I know he thought _he_ was _my_ ticket to those things. But ... I’ve never really wanted to be a TV star.”

“What do _you_ want, Eric?” Jack looked straight at Eric, his smile warm and affectionate.

“I guess ... I love my family, and I love working here, “ Eric started. He’d never really voiced these doubts to anybody before, not even Macy. “But sometimes I wonder if I’ve missed out by staying here.”

Jack nodded. “It’s hard when the weight of the family business rests on your shoulders,” he said sympathetically. “I get it.”

“You do?”

“My parents ...” Jack’s gaze darted downward briefly before returning to Eric. “I told you my dad played hockey professionally, but that’s not the whole story. He was kind of a big deal. I was supposed to follow in his footsteps, but — ” Jack shrugged. That shrug said a lot.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Eric said. He knew how hard it was to talk about hard things.

“No, I want to. It’s part of my story.”

“Sounds like the kind of story best told over a cup of coffee and some pie.” Eric motioned for Jack to take a seat and ran back to the kitchen, returning with two mugs and a slice of chocolate cream pie — they’d sold out of the apple today. He set one mug in front of Jack, who stared at it for a very long time while he set to work adding the proper amounts of sugar and cream to his own brew.

As the silence stretched out, Eric worried he was pushing too much. Jack barely knew him; it was ridiculous to expect he would want to open up about personal and family issues to the guy who managed the diner he happened to frequent. But as Eric stirred his coffee, watching coffee and cream swirl together into a pleasing light brown, Jack spoke.

“My father won back-to-back Stanley Cups before he could legally drink. By the time I was born, he was being talked about as a future Hall-of-Famer. Everybody says I learned to skate before I could run. I don’t know if that’s true, but all of my earliest memories are of being on the ice.”

Eric nodded. “My earliest memory is of lining up the sugar caddies and pretending they were a train.”

Jack smiled at that. “Yeah, you get it. And I think you probably get that I loved it. Hockey was the life I was born into, but it never felt like an obligation. Until it did.”

Eric listened — and occasionally took a bite of pie — as Jack told him about growing up a hockey prodigy, and the constant pressure he felt to be as good as his father. On the eve of the NHL draft, Jack told him, he’d overdosed on a combination of his anti-anxiety medication and alcohol. “I had to take some time away, obviously. We all — me, my parents, my therapist — thought I’d go back to hockey eventually. But I ended up going to college instead. I found my way to the hockey team there — that’s where I met Johnson — but even though a few teams were interested in signing me after graduation, I knew I was done.”

“Your parents —?”

“My parents supported my decision. My dad and I have worked through a lot over the years, and I know now that he never intended to put so much pressure on me to succeed. He sincerely believed playing professionally was what would make me happy, because that’s what I told him I wanted. Why would I tell him otherwise? Hockey was our entire world.” Jack huffed out a gruff laugh. “My parents knew a lot about hockey, but they didn’t know a lot about raising a shy kid with an anxiety disorder. He admits now that he should have been thinking more like a father, and not a professional. It’s hard to blame them, you know? I’m not a parent, but it seems like raising a kid must be like walking through a mine field all day and then waking up in the morning and doing it all again.”

Eric didn’t quite know what to say, so he went with the thing that sounded most true: “Seems like it must be worth it though, even if you blow everything to bits.”

“Well, I kind of did,” Jack reminded him.

“And your parents are okay with you doing … this?”

Jack chuckled. “I wasn’t supposed to be doing this forever,” he said, and for moment, he looked like he wasn’t quite sure how that had happened, either. “Johnson told me about this job. He said it would be a good way to ‘see the country and find what I’m looking for,’ whatever that means. I thought it would be good to take a break from studying and earn some money before going to grad school.” He shrugged. “Ten years later …”

“I know what you mean. I always thought I’d have a little pie shop of my own by now, but …”

“But …?” Jack prodded.

Eric shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not like I don’t love working here.”

Jack smiled kindly. “Bittle— _Eric_ — what would you _like_ to be doing? If you could?” he asked for the second time that night.

Jack was giving him an opening. Suddenly, all of Eric’s unspoken _wants_ came pouring out. “I’ve been thinking it might be nice to open a place of my own. Something small, not a diner. Lord knows I’ve had enough of waiting tables and sweeping floors for a lifetime, and if I never see another fried appetizer platter again it’ll be too soon.” As he told Jack about this secret dream, he realized it was the first time he’d admitted it to anyone, including himself.

“So a bakery, then? I can see that.”

“Maybe. I’ve actually been thinking about something a little smaller. You know that dairy with the drive-thru window? The one between here and Atlanta, with the Jersey cow on the roof? Something like that, but with pie.” Stuck with sudden inspiration, Eric slammed his hand on the table. “A pie-thru!”

Jack’s mouth quirked upward. “A pie-thru, eh? Sounds sweet.”

“I’d put something savory on the menu just for you. I know you’re not real big on sweets.”

“I’d be your first customer,” Jack promised. “And I’m not big on sweets, but this pie is pretty good tonight.”

Eric looked down at the dessert plate and realized, with astonishment, that they’d eaten the whole slice. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not gonna happen. It’s just a silly dream.”

But Jack wouldn’t give it up. “Why is it silly? You know how to bake. You’ve been managing this place since you were eighteen. And your degree is in business, isn’t it? Sounds like it’s meant to happen.”

Eric shook his head, knowing Jack would never understand. “It’s not like that for me. This is my place. My family needs me here.”

“Maybe,” Jack said, “they need to let you go. You’re not happy here.”

That … was a low blow. Of course Eric was happy! With MooMaw retired and his parents starting to turn more and more of the daily management over to him, he pretty much had free reign. Just last week he’d added a blueberry pie milkshake to the menu, and it was proving to be so popular he was already planning next month’s seasonal pie shake.

Wanting more when he had so much was just … selfish.

“Maybe,” Eric countered in an attempt to avoid going down a road where he had to admit to himself Jack might be at least a little right, “you should take your own advice. Why haven’t you gone back to school?”

Jack took a sip of coffee before answering. “I should have done it a long time ago. It’s been so long I think I missed my chance.”

“There’s no time table on getting your education, hon,” Eric said. He should know. It had taken him eight years to get his bachelors. Of course, he’d been working full time, and had taken a semester or five off, but he’d finally gotten his degree just last year.

“I know. I guess I’m just afraid I won’t remember how to do it,” Jack confessed. “It’s been so long since I’ve had to write a paper or read a text book.”

“You read all the time!” Eric said. “Every time you come in here, you’ve got your nose stuck in a different book. What was that you had with you the other day? Something about a boat?”

“The Shackleton expedition.”

“Right. Reading for school won’t be hard if you’re enjoying yourself. What is it you want to study? More history?”

Jack nodded. “I’m not sure what I want to focus on, which I guess is why I haven’t pursued it yet. But I never intended for this to be my career.”

“Ten years is a long time to be in a temporary job,” Eric agreed. 

“It is,” Jack said, holding Eric’s gaze.

*

Eric worried it would be awkward the next time Jack stopped in, that the easy way they’d confided in one another was simply a by product of the intimate atmosphere created by the rain and the late night, but Jack seemed determined to pick up where they’d left off. It didn’t escape Eric’s notice that he arrived a half hour before closing, and lingered over his meal even after the other customers left and Eric flipped the sign in the window from “open” to “closed.”

“Now, you know I’m not gonna kick you out, but it sure would be nice if you’d order some dessert so I don’t have to eat this last slice of pie myself,” Eric teased, holding the plate out like an offering. It wasn’t even apple; he’d sold the last two slices of apple to a woman with two little kids. But he was starting to become a little annoyed by Jack’s steadfast refusal to try the pie — the shared slice of chocolate cream notwithstanding. The man had to have a secret sweet tooth!

“What is it?” Jack asked, and if Eric’s eyes didn’t deceive him, he actually looked interested.

“Coconut cream.”

Jack made a face. Okay, so not the coconut.

“I can make you some hot chocolate,” Eric offered instead.

Jack smiled warmly. “That sounds perfect, Eric.”

Eric liked the way those words — “perfect” followed by his name — sounded when Jack said them.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/142939242@N03/49129816891/in/dateposted-public/)

*

So, Jack wasn’t The One, obviously. It was kind of hard for him to be the one when he didn’t even seem to like pie. Eric wondered what that was about. Was he traumatized by pie as a kid? A victim of one too many pies in the face? Or maybe he just didn’t like dessert. Eric knew Jack wasn’t precious about his diet — somebody who seemed to exist on chicken tenders and french fries could hardly claim a higher moral ground when it came to dessert. And he hadn’t refused the hot chocolate with whipped cream either, so Eric knew it wasn’t about the sugar.

But even if Jack wasn’t The One, he’d somehow become the best friend Eric had had since Macy in high school. He looked forward to Jack’s visits, which were often preceded by a morning or afternoon text letting him know he was in town. It was the rare evening Jack didn’t show up after working out in his motel’s gym.

“Fancy meeting you here, Mr. Zimmermann,” Eric greeted him one evening. “Will you be having your usual tonight?”

Jack glanced outside, where it had been raining all day. “I thought I might try the soup instead. The chicken noodle?”

“The chicken noodle is good,” Eric said, “but if you’re getting soup, I recommend the broccoli cheddar. You’ll want the chicken noodle if you’ve got a cold, but the broccoli cheddar will warm you up on a night like this.”

“The broccoli cheddar then,” Jack agreed, pulling out his book as Eric went back to the kitchen to fulfill his order.

Jack put his book down when Eric returned with his soup and a mug of coffee. “Can you sit for a minute?” Jack asked.

Eric glanced at the clock and noticed it was 10 minutes until closing. “Sometimes I think you wait until we’re almost closed so I _can_ join you,” he said, taking a seat on the opposite end of the booth anyway.

“Guilty,” Jack said, color rising in his cheeks. From the heat of the soup, Eric told himself.

“Now that you’re in the area so often, you should start getting out more, make some friends.” Eric encouraged. “Missy down at the motel told me you’ve practically moved in.”

Jack paused, spoon midway between the bowl and his mouth. “Aren’t we friends?”

“Well …” as much as Eric wanted this to be something more, the fact remained that Jack was his customer.

“Eric,” Jack said, setting his fork down. “Look at me.”

Eric wished he’d brought a cup of coffee or slice of pie for himself, something to distract him so he wouldn’t have to look into Jack Zimmermann’s impossibly blue eyes. Slowly, he tore his gaze from the “MB + AH” that had been etched into the table top for as long as he could remember and met those eyes.

“You know I could stay in Atlanta,” Jack said softly. “I stay in Madison because I like seeing you.”

Indeed, Jack had gotten into Atlanta that evening so he could make it to an early morning meeting, and though Eric had serious questions as to why Jack’s first stop would be Madison Pie Palace when he had the whole of Atlanta’s nightlife to explore, he wasn’t complaining.

“Oh,” Eric said.

“I thought … You don’t mind that I come in all the time, do you?” Bless the poor boy’s heart, he looked so anxious. Jack couldn’t possibly think Eric minded that he was here every night, but his face told a different story.

“Sweetheart, of course not,” Eric reassured him, the endearment dripping off his tongue before he could stop himself. “Seeing you walk through that door is the highlight of my day.”

It was true, and it was time he admitted it.

Jack visibly relaxed. “Do you ever take a day off?”

“Not lately,” Eric grumbled. With MooMaw’s recent bout of pneumonia, Mama had been spending more time running her to and from doctors’ appointments and less time at the restaurant. He really should hire an assistant manager because at this point, he hadn’t had a day off in … more than two months.

“Do you think you can get one this weekend?” Jack sounded almost hopeful. It was hopeful for Jack Zimmermann, whose expressions varied minutely. Eric was learning to read them, though, and this was definitely hopeful. “I have to head back to Boston on Monday, but I extended my stay to spend the weekend,” Jack explained. “And this movie theater in Atlanta is doing a sports movies film festival.”

“That sounds fun,” Eric agreed, willing his wildly beating heart to stay calm.

“You could join me,” Jack suggested. “It would be more fun with a friend.”

“It’s a date,” Eric said.

*

 _Date_ was relative, of course, There was no way Jack could mean a _date_ date. He probably just wanted somebody to hang out with so he wouldn’t be alone. That’s what Eric told himself on Saturday morning as he carefully chose his favorite skinny khakis and a slim-fitting navy blue t-shirt that didn’t have the Madison Pie Palace logo or unidentifiable food stains on it. It was what he told himself as he styled his hair and slipped a tin of mints into his pocket, just in case.

He’d gotten up early to go into the restaurant and prep a few pies, but was home and waiting for Jack when he arrived to pick him up.

“Here’s a flyer with a list of the films,” Jack said, handing Eric a piece of paper as he slid into the passenger seat of Jack’s rental. “Some of them are screening at the same time so we won’t be able to make all of them, but I think we can catch at least three. It’s a, uh, pretty diverse list.”

Eric stifled a laugh as he scanned the schedule because it was, indeed, diverse. Among classics like _Rocky_ and _The Natural_ were unconventional choices like _I, Tonya_ and _Talladega Nights_. “Looks like a little something for everyone,” Eric said, pointing at the latter.

“Ha ha. We actually used to watch that a lot in college.”

In the end, the movies they saw came down to timing as much as preference, but Eric couldn’t help but think Jack had revealed a lot about himself in their eventual choices: _A League of Their Own_ , _Hoop Dreams_ , and _Miracle_.

The theater was one of those trendy places that served food and drinks, and a little cards on the backs of the seats in front of them advertised a “sports bar-themed” menu to go along with the festival.

“Would it be terrible if I ordered some boneless buffalo wings?” Jack asked, pointing to the list of “drinks and appetizers.”

“Yes,” Eric whispered, gently nudging Jack with his shoulder, “because I refuse to believe any man can exist on breaded, deep-fried chicken. But it’s thematically appropriate, so I’ll let it slide.”

Eric’s resolve in not treating the afternoon as a date wore down a little with each movie. During _A League of Their Own_ , his arm made contact with Jack’s on their shared arm rest and Jack pressed his a little closer. When Eric bought popcorn to share during _Hoop Dreams_ , Jack raised the arm rest and settled the bucket between them. By the time _Miracle_ began, they’d traded the empty popcorn container for a couple of beers but the arm rest remained out of play.

When Eric found himself nodding off, jerking awake when his head hit Jack’s shoulder, Jack simply slipped an arm around him as if to say he didn’t mind. _Not a date_ , Eric reminded himself as he blinked awake to the credits.

The sky was dark when they emerged from the theater and instead of heading directly toward the car, Jack tilted his head at a line of food trucks parked down the street. “Dinner?”

Eric nodded. “I’m so sorry I fell asleep in there,” he apologized. 

Jack shrugged. “You’ve been up all day. I should have thought of that before insisting on a third movie in a dark theater.”

“It was a good movie!” Eric rushed to reassure him. “I was really enjoying it until, well …”

“It’s okay, Bittle,” Jack chuckled. “I get it. Not everyone is as into old hockey movies as I am.”

“Honey, it could have been a theatrical showing of _Homecoming_ and I still would have fallen asleep.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Jack admitted. “Is that a movie?”

“Let’s just say that the way you feel about _Miracle_ is the way I feel about Queen Bey’s magnum opus.”

“Then we should watch it together sometime,” Jack said.

 _Not a date_ , Eric told himself. _Definitely not a date_.

They ate — a pulled pork burrito for Eric and a salmon burger for Jack — and continued their conversation as they walked the neighborhood.

“For a long time,” Jack said, “it was hard for me to watch some of those. They reminded me of everything I’d lost. My team. My future. My hope that anything could ever be good without hockey.”

“And now?” Eric asked. He knew, a little, about what it was like to give up a sport you loved, but he couldn’t fathom what Jack had gone through.

“Now I think it’s not so bad. We all make choices and the choices I made when I was 18 were not the best. But I’m here right now because of them, so it’s hard to have regrets.”

“I think it’s okay to still feel sad about it,” Eric said. “Just because things turned out right doesn’t mean you can’t grieve for what might’ve been.”

“Do you?” Jack asked. “Do you miss figure skating?”

“Oh, sometimes. That was so long ago now. The way hockey was for you, figure skating was never like that for me.”

They made two loops around the block before returning to their car, and didn’t talk much on the drive back to Madison. The music Jack chose was was gloomy yet somehow hopeful, the singer spinning tales of loss and second chances. The steady monotony of his voice made Eric sleepy; he fought to stay awake until Jack placed a big hand on his knee.

“You’re tired.”

Eric opened his eyes and blinked against the glare of the streetlights. “Some company I’ve turned out to be.”

“You know you don’t have to talk all the time to keep my interest,” Jack said. He didn’t take his eyes off the road, but he didn’t take his hand of Eric’s knee, either. “It’s nice to find somebody I can be quiet with when words feel like too much.”

Eric nodded his agreement. He felt it, too. He looked forward to his conversations with Jack, their casual banter and the way they were beginning to share the deeper parts of themselves. But this was nice, too. Sitting here next to each other, sharing space without having to fill it with unnecessary conversation, felt natural. It felt right. It felt exactly like Eric had always imagined being with his soulmate would feel like.

If only he could be sure. If only Jack would try the pie, so he could know once and for all if this was as real as it felt.

It was past midnight when Jack pulled into the driveway of Eric’s house. “You have to get up in a few hours, don’t you?” he asked apologetically.

“Well, we open an hour later on Sunday mornings, and Mama and some others will handle the breakfast and brunch rushes. As long as I’m there to make sure we have enough pie for the post-church crowd, it’ll be fine.”

“Good. I don’t want you to get in trouble with your boss if you oversleep.”

The joke was delivered with grave sincerity but gosh, Jack Zimmermann was sweet. “Might have to have a few words with myself about responsibility and punctuality,” Eric said, finally giving in to the yawn he’d been holding back.

“I’m glad you took the day off,” Jack said. His hand was still on Eric’s knee. “I had fun.”

“Even when I fell asleep during your favorite movie? I’ll make it up to you. Next time …” The words caught in Eric’s throat as Jack shifted, closing the space between them.

“Next time?” Jack breathed.

“We can have that double feature we talked about. _Miracle_ and _Homecoming_. I’ll even bring apple pie and lemonade.”

Jack made a noise that might have been interpreted as amusement, interest, or desire. He leaned a little closer, and Eric reflexively mirrored him. Their lips were inches apart and …

Eric had to ruin it all by yawning in Jack’s face.

“Okay, okay,” Jack laughed. “I can take a hint. I should get to bed, too.”

Whatever bridge they’d been about to cross seemed to have disappeared along with the moment. Eric felt briefly deflated until he remembered he really did have to be up and ready for work in just a few hours.

“Come by for breakfast tomorrow morning,” Eric said as he got out of the car. “We have a great quiche with ham and cheese. Or a spinach and goat cheese frittata, if you’re watching those carbs.”

“Of course you do,” Jack said, and Eric didn’t miss the fondness in his tone. “I’ll try to stop in after my run.”

Coach was waiting up — he would never say he was waiting up, he would say he was just watching some old college football game on ESPN Classic — when Eric let himself in.

“How was your date?” he asked.

“It wasn’t a date.” Eric really just wanted to go to his room and go to sleep, but he recognized an invitation for what it was and joined his father on the couch.

“Seemed like a date.”

“Daddy …” Eric sighed. “Jack and I are just friends.”

“Did he pay your way?”

“Well …” Yes, in fact. Jack had sneakily purchased their film fest passes online, and refused Eric’s offer to reimburse him for half. They’d both paid for the snacks they’d eaten throughout the day, but then Jack had insisted on buying dinner.

“That’s a date,” Coach said, knowingly.

“He didn’t try to kiss me,” Eric said, feeling his ears redden as he confessed this disappointment to his father, of all people.

“That means he’s a gentleman.”

“Or not interested,” Eric lamented.

“He’s interested,” Coach said decisively. “Have you seen the way he looks at you?” Eric started to reply, but Coach shushed him. “Game’s back on.”

What was his life, Eric wondered, that he and his father could sit on the couch and talk about boys?


	6. Chapter 6

There were summer prospect camps, meetings with agents and general managers, and one near-signing with the Providence Falconers before Jack decided hockey might be his past and present, but it wasn’t his future.

He’d gone to college planning to get a degree, an insurance policy against a future that might not include hockey. And he’d bet right. He missed hockey, but he couldn’t live without it the way he’d once thought.

Besides, if he’d stuck with hockey his life would be so much poorer for it. His career might have paralleled his father’s, with Stanley Cups and signing bonuses, multimillion dollar endorsements and a model wife. But he wouldn’t have Shitty and Lardo. He wouldn’t have this career he’d built on his own, separate from his parents. He wouldn’t be here in Georgia right now, making plans for a future nobody could have envisioned.

It had been a long time since he’d seriously thought about going back to school. But the idea had resurfaced during his conversations with Eric, and he couldn’t seem to shake it. And if he was going to nag Eric about pursuing his dream of opening his own place, he had to take his own advice and look into grad school.

“Does this have anything to do with your new role as founder and president of the Eric Bittle appreciation society?” Lardo asked over FaceTime. She wore safety goggles and a black knit beanie with what looked like cat ears sticking up from the top. Jack had thought she’d be a good person to tell about the masters degree program he’d been looking into at UGA. Lardo, however, had seen right through his explanation that he “might as well go for it since the Georgia assignment is looking permanent.”

“It might,” Jack said, not willing to give Lardo the win so easily.

“ _Jaaaaaack_ ,” Lardo whined. “Just give me this one. I’ve spent the whole weekend breaking up the tile that was in Grandma’s shower.”

Ah. That explained the goggles. “Not the pink tile, I hope.”

“Psh. Like Shitty would allow that. No, this was from a bathroom remodel she did in the nineties. I’m going to use this stuff for a mural and redo the shower with this glittery tile I salvaged from the bathroom of an old strip club.”

“I’m not sure if Shitty’s dad would be proud or horrified.”

“Gay strip club,” Lardo clarified.

“Horrified, then,” Jack predicted.

“That’s the idea. Stop trying to change the subject. Does this sudden interest in grad school have anything to do with the guy you’re banging?”

“I’ve always been interested in grad school,” Jack reminded her. It wasn’t a lie, even though it had been years since he’d seriously considered it. “And we’re not … that.”

“Dating?”

Dating would be accurate except … Jack wasn’t entirely sure Eric knew they were dating. He’d assumed his intentions were clear when he asked Eric to spend yesterday with him, and he’d tried throughout the day to make it clear that it was a date — he’d picked him up, paid for the movies and dinner, and even cuddled with Eric (a little) when he’d fallen asleep on his shoulder. He’d thought he was being very clear when, on the drive home, he put his hand on Eric’s knee and talked about how nice it was just to be with him, even when neither had much to say. But then he’d dropped Eric off at his house and they’d lingered in the car for a little while and … just as Jack finally worked up the nerve to kiss Eric goodnight, Eric had yawned and said something about getting to bed.

In Eric’s defense, he _had_ gone into work early to start some pies. Jack hadn’t realized, when he asked Eric to spend the day with him, that he’d still fulfill his morning responsibilities. But the abrupt goodbye had left him wondering if he’d gotten the situation entirely wrong.

“I dunno, Lards. I can’t tell if he’s not interested, or if he just wants to take things slow. Or —” he remembered the yawn — “Maybe he thinks I’m boring. Am I boring?”

“Dude, yes. You know this about yourself. But —” Lardo pushed her goggles up onto her head and gave him a shit-eating grin — “if it helps, I found his Twitter and it seems like he’s _definitely_ interested.”

“His Twitter?” It hadn’t even occurred to Jack that Eric might have a social media account unaffiliated with the restaurant. He’d looked at the Pie Palace’s Instagram account once; it was heavy on photos of the daily special. Every so often somebody (Eric, Jack assumed) would post an old photo “from the archives” accompanied by a related family story.

Jack may or may not have spent all of Friday evening scrolling through that Instagram account, pausing on the posts featuring Eric — as a toddler helping his grandma in the kitchen, a young teenager dressed for his day as an official Pie Palace employee, with a Food Network host who had visited for a feature.

“‘Is it a date if the guy you’ve been crushing on asks you to an all-day film festival? Asking for a friend,’” Lardo read aloud. “That was from last week.”

“Isn’t reading his personal tweets kind of … invasive?” Jack asked.

“This is all public,” Lardo reminded him. “Should I continue?”

“Just … maybe just summarize it for me,” Jack said, still feeling like he was crossing a line.

“Okay, he basically spent Friday night and Saturday morning stressing over what to wear, posted a selfie asking if his outfit was okay right before the date, didn’t post at all during your date, then posted again asking if it was a date if you bought him dinner but didn’t kiss him goodnight.”

“I did!” Jack protested. “I tried, anyway.”

“Jack,” Lardo said, “did you, at any point, actually tell Eric you guys were on a date? Or did you just awkwardly ask him to hang out with you and assume he’d know that means you’re super into him.”

“I —”

“You and Camilla were together like a whole semester before she realized you were dating. You cannot ask somebody to join you in the dining hall on chicken tender night and assume they’ll know that for you, that’s the equivalent of dinner at the French Laundry.”

Jack could feel a stress headache coming on as the weight of his miscalculation hit him. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“Dude, you look like you’re going to be sick. It’s not the end of the world. He likes you! If you’re going to be staying in Georgia, you have time to fix this. Just make sure he’s worth staying for before you uproot everything you have here to be there.”

Lardo was right, obviously. What kind of person made longterm plans based on one good maybe-date? His quiet agreement was interrupted by a crash and a loud cry off-camera.

“Oh, shit. _Shits_!” Lardo jammed her glasses back onto her face. “I have to go. I told him not to move that jackhammer on his own.”

“Yeah, go,” Jack laughed. The last thing he heard before he ended the FaceTime session was Lardo and Shitty bickering in the background.

Eric Bittle was worth staying for, Jack decided as he clicked back to the open UGA tab on his computer.

At a quarter-’til-eight, Jack’s eyes hurt from staring at his computer and his stomach growled from hunger. It wasn’t even a question as to where he’d have dinner. Maybe Eric never wanted to see him again after the way he’d botched things last night, but better to find out sooner rather than later.

“He’s in the back packin’ up pies for an early pickup tomorrow,” an older man said when Jack entered. Jack recognized Coach Bittle as Eric’s father, even though he’d never met him before. Coach, Eric had told him, was the high school football coach, and he didn’t spend a lot of time in the restaurant during the season. “And we’re closing in five minutes, but I’ll make an exception for you.”

“Oh, um, thanks. Can I —?” Jack nodded in the direction of the kitchen.

“Go on,” Coach Bittle said. “Maybe you can get the boy to sit down and have a bite to eat. He’s been working all day.”

Jack quietly stepped into the kitchen, where every available surface seemed to be covered with pies and boxes.

“Did you do this all today?” Jack asked in awe. There were just so many pies.

“Jack!” Eric nearly dropped the pie he was lowering into its box. “You startled me.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, hon. I just forgot myself for a minute. Sometimes I get so focused on what I’m doing everything else kind of falls away. We just got a big order from the school board for teacher appreciation day,” Eric explained. “We don’t usually take orders like this on such short notice, but I needed the distraction.”

Jack stood next to Eric and picked up a pie. The latticework was exquisite, the result of years of practice. It shimmered with a light dusting of sanding sugar, a finishing touch Jack knew wasn’t part of the Bittle family method. Eric had been experimenting with it as his own signature flourish.

“Can I help?” he asked as he set it in an empty box.

Eric nodded. “Thanks.”

They quickly fell into a rhythm as Jack placed the pies in their boxes and Eric closed them up and added them to the stack of packaged pies in the corner. They worked quietly but, as it had been last night in the car, the silence was comfortable, comforting even.

“Last one,” Jack finally said, lifting what looked like an apple pie and carefully placing it in its box. He did up the lid himself and handed it to Eric, who ran a finger along the top and smiled softly before setting it aside.

“You probably came by to eat and here I put you to work,” Eric said quietly.

“I don’t mind,” Jack said. “I really came to see you. I think you’re closed now, anyway.”

Eric glanced at the clock on the wall behind them. “I can fix something up for you.”

“Last night was meant to be a date,” Jack blurted out.

“Wh— what?” Eric stood very still, eyes on Jack, one corner of his apron clutched in his hand. His eyes seemed larger and brighter than ever and Jack’s heart sank as he realized he might have upset him.

“Can we try again? Next week? Or tomorrow, whenever, just … can we try?”

“Well —” Eric slowly unclenched his fist, releasing the fabric — “if you’re up for an early morning, I have to deliver these pies to six different PTA presidents by seven. I could use some company.” His eyes were still bright but now his smile was … hopeful?

Jack exhaled. “Really?”

Eric placed a steady hand on Jack’s arm. “Really. I was hoping yesterday was a date too, but you’ve been so friendly and I didn’t know if I was reading too much into it.”

“You weren’t. But my friends say I can be a little oblivious and, uh, too subtle?”

“You could have been a little more obvious,” Eric agreed. “Or I could have asked. I think I was just afraid that if I asked, and you said no —”

“I wouldn’t have said no,” Jack reassured him.

“I know that now! Lord, we’re a pair. Let me get you something to eat. I can cook up an omelet real quick?”

“I’ll make ‘em.” Coach Bittle stood in the doorway, a smug smile betraying his gruff exterior. “You boys sit down. Seems like you have a few things to talk about.”

Eric led Jack to their favorite table and burst out laughing as soon as Coach Bittle was out of earshot. “Oh my lord, I have no idea what’s gotten into him!” he whispered through his giggles. “I think he might be trying to play matchmaker.”

“I promise my dad will be ten times worse.”

“Oh?” Eric raised an eyebrow. “Thinking of introducing me to the parents already?”

“Euh …” That wish had slipped out, but Jack didn’t want to take it back. “Eventually, yeah. If that’s … it doesn’t have to be right away. We can take things slowly.” They _should_ take things slowly, Jack reminded himself. He was leaving tomorrow for a week, and while he planned to use the trip to tie up most of his loose ends in Boston — at least as far as work was concerned — he didn’t want to pressure Eric into moving too quickly.

“But … I'll still see you tomorrow morning?” Eric asked.

"Yeah," Jack said. "It's a date."

"A real one?" Eric teased, a note of uncertainty in his voice.

"A real one," Jack confirmed.


	7. Chapter 7

Eric still felt a little heady after delivering the PTA pies on Monday morning. Sitting beside Jack, just being _near_ Jack, seemed to have this effect on him. They’d been a little careful with each other, a little cautious, neither speaking of the fact that it was a date. But midway through the deliveries Jack directed Eric to turn into a Starbucks drive-thru and he paid for two coffees, one black and one with pumpkin spice syrup.

“My flight leaves this afternoon,” Jack confessed after they made their last delivery, and Eric suddenly remembered Jack was going back to Boston for a week. “I know the timing sucks when we’re just getting started, but —“

“I understand,” Eric said, placing a calm hand on Jack’s knee. “I’m not going anywhere. I like you, Mr. Zimmermann.”

“I’ll text you,” Jack said, and it sounded like he was promising Eric the world.

Eric dropped Jack off at his motel so he could get ready for work and, too restless and keyed up to go into work himself, Eric decided to take his second day off in three days.

At first, he wasn’t sure where he was headed. He just drove, headed toward the freeway. He imagined this was what Jack must see on his way out of Madison.

Eventually, he realized he was in Athens, making the trip to UGA that he should have made all those years ago when Sean invited him. Well, he was here now, and maybe it had a little bit to do with a different boy.

He didn’t know where he was even going until he pulled into a strip mall parking lot. It featured the usual mix of chain and local businesses, but the one that stood out to him was an abandoned restaurant set apart from the others.

The old building that had once been home to a doughnut shop (Eric recognized the shape of the original sign), and then a taco stand (the jalapeño string lights still hung from the drive-thru window) had been, from the looks of it, unoccupied for a long time. Peering through a dirty, cracked window he could see the ghosts of those previous establishments: hookups for water and electric, an old deep fryer. It would require a lot of work, weeks of days off, to reinvent it. But already he could see where he’d put his oven, how he would decorate the small patio to make it feel welcoming to those with time to stop and sit for a little while. He imagined a fresh coat of white paint on the outside, a pastel peach and green awning, window art renderings of his pies and milkshakes.

It was close to the university; he could hire a few students and stay open late, serve coffee and pie to kids in the middle of a marathon study session or on their way home from parties.

He stopped for lunch at a coffee shop just off campus that buzzed with life and youth. While he ate his chicken salad sandwich and slice of peach pie (he had to check out the potential competition), he downloaded a real estate app and — just for fun, he told himself — searched for nearby rentals.

Against his better judgment, he continued to drive around, following directions to the apartment complexes and condos the app had suggested. He took note of how close they were to the restaurant and campus, considered how much of his budget he could afford to put toward rent.

Circling back to the vacant drive-thru, he stopped for just a minute to take a few pictures and write down the number of the leasing agent. He tried to tamp down the frisson of excitement he felt as he got back in the car and headed toward Madison.

The restaurant’s bright neon sign, the one that said “Madison Pie Palace” but had always just meant “home” to Eric, lit the way as he approached his freeway exit later that night. For the first time in his life, he didn’t feel like he was coming home.

*

Maybe the trip to Athens awakened something in Eric. Maybe _Jack_ had awakened something in Eric. It had been exactly a week since his impromptu trip, and though he still hadn’t called the number he’d carefully saved in his phone, he’d been quietly making plans. He’d run the numbers by himself and met with a banker this morning before work, and now he knew exactly what it would take to make this dream happen. He’d told Mama he was meeting an old high school friend for breakfast; he hadn’t wanted to tell his family his plans just yet.

But he did want to tell Jack, whose push had gotten him to this point.

They’d been texting every day, in stolen moments between Jack’s meetings and lulls in between the lunch and dinner rush at the Pie Palace. Jack had gotten back into town earlier in the day and been by for dinner, but they hadn’t had time for more than a quick hello before Eric got pulled in to explain how the fryer worked to a new employee. When he returned Jack at left but he’d left a note next to the ten dollar bill he’d left as a tip: “For the pie-thru.”

Eric had smiled to himself as he pocketed it. He’d been holding back all week because he wanted to tell Jack in person, but now he was absolutely bursting to tell him his news. Feeling a little bold, a little reckless, he drove past the turnoff toward home and headed toward Jack’s motel.

It was easy enough to find Jack’s car in the parking lot — it was the only one there tonight — but he realized, as he pulled in next to it, that he didn’t know which room Jack was in. He took a chance on the only room with a light on inside and held his breath as he knocked.

A creak of bed springs, footsteps, and suddenly the door was opening.

“Eric?” Jack squinted at him from behind black wireframe glasses that gave him a vaguely academic air. “Why didn’t you text?”

“Oh lord, I didn’t wake you, did I?” It was only just after nine, but still. Why hadn’t he texted? He’d been so anxious to get here he hadn’t even thought about that.

Jack smiled. “I was just watching a documentary about colony collapse. They say the bees are canaries in a coal mine.”

“Oh. I think I heard something about that.”

“It’s really interesting.” Jack opened the door wider and motioned Eric inside. “Did you bring food?”

Eric lifted the pastry bag he’d carefully packed with a box of macarons. He’d been experimenting lately with recipes for little things he could sell at a lower price point. College kids liked colorful things they could put on Instagram, didn’t they? “I know you’re not much of a sweets guy, but I can’t just show up empty handed. And” — he hesitated for the barest of moments — “I have news.”

“You do?” Jack took the proffered bag and peered inside. “Macarons?”

“It’s a new thing. I need your opinion.”

“You came all the way over _just_ because you need my opinion on macarons?” Jack’s arm brushed against Eric’s waist as he reached around him to close the door. Eric wanted to lean into that touch, but he stepped around Jack and took a seat in the room’s one chair, a desk chair that had surely seen better days.

The entire room had seen better days. It was sparsely decorated, the threadbare comforter doing little to conceal the bed’s sagging mattress. But at least it looked clean, which was more than Eric could say for the carpet. The carpet, which may have been blue at one time, was absolutely filthy. (Eric made a mental note to leave his shoes on.) Jack’s laptop and phone charged on the scratched sufrace of a small desk. The chair had creaked ominously when Eric sat down, and he quickly rationalized that if it could support the weight of a former hockey player then it probably wouldn’t collapse under him.

The place hardly screamed “home” for somebody who spent so much time here. Why Jack stayed here when he could be in nice hotel down the road in Athens or Atlanta was beyond him.

“The macarons aren’t the news. I need your opinion on them because” — Eric took a deep breath — “I may be putting them on the menu.” He waited a beat and added, “At my new place. The pie-thru.”

Eric felt his breath leave his body and his soul ascend as Jack pulled him out of the creaky chair and enveloped him in a full-on hug. “Eric! You did it? You’re getting a place?”

“Not yet,” Eric said with a laugh. He pulled away and gazed up at Jack, who looked as happy as Eric felt. “It’s still gonna be a good while before I have a place. But I’ve been talking to my bank and it looks like a possibility. I’ve already found a perfect spot near UGA. I may have to commute for a little while until I get on my feet, but it’s looking good. I just … I wanted you to be the first to know,” he said, suddenly feeling shy.

“It’ll be a big change.”

“Yeah.”

And then, so casually Eric wondered if he’d planned to do it this way, Jack smiled a little smugly and said, “If you time it right, we can move at the same time. I applied to grad school there. It’s not a sure thing, but the counselor I’ve been talking to said it’s all but certain I’ll get in.”

“You …” Eric’s mind spun, wondering at the coincidence of it all. “ _What_?”

Jack laughed. “I was planning to apply to schools in New England, but I’m getting used to it here. I think it would be nice to stay. If I had a reason to stay.”

And Eric may not have been the most experienced when it came to guys, but Jack’s meaning was perfectly clear. Quickly, before he had a chance to overthink it — kind of like the way he was doing everything these days — Eric surged forward and pulled Jack toward him.

All of the pent up frustration Eric had been feeling about being unable to kiss Jack, all the while knowing Jack wanted to kiss him back, suddenly evaporated as Jack pulled him closer and placed a supportive hand on the back of his head, deepening the kiss.

“You —” Eric gasped when they pulled apart.

Jack huffed out a ragged breath. “Yeah?”

“Were you ever gonna tell me you wear _glasses_?”

Jack’s laugh was low and warm. “I was hoping you’d find out, sooner or later.”

“You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?” Eric asked.

“So are you,” Jack said, just before he kissed Eric again.

*

“How many slices of apple have we sold this month?” Mama asked the next morning, as if she _knew_ what Eric and Jack had been doing at the Madison Motor Inn last night.

She couldn’t possibly know, Eric reasoned. Sure, he’d gotten home later than usual, but it wasn’t like his parents kept close tabs on their adult son’s whereabouts. He’d planned on telling them he was with Jack if they asked, but they were in bed by the time he returned.

Not that there was any chance they’d have been awake at one in the morning anyway. It was safe to say he and Jack had gotten a little carried away, but they hadn’t gone beyond kissing. They still had a lot to talk about and besides, Eric did not want to have sex with Jack Zimmermann for the first time in a creaky old bed in a room with paper-thin walls.

They had done a lot of talking in addition to the kissing. Jack’s masters program, if he got in, was two years. He’d be here for two years. He planned to quit his job — he didn’t really need the money anyway — and buy a condo near campus. “The cost of living here is a lot lower,” he reasoned. “I can sell my place in Boston at a profit and have enough to buy something small.”

“Oh my gosh, honey, don’t get carried away!” Eric had exclaimed in surprise. “You don’t even know if you’re gonna like it here.”

“I think I’m going to like it here,” Jack had murmured, leaning in for another kiss.

He wasn’t sure what any of this meant for the curse, which was why he startled a bit when Mama asked her question.He wished it could be Jack, but no amount of wishing would change the truth: Jack didn’t eat pie. Jack wasn’t The One.

After last night, Eric was pretty sure he didn’t care about finding The One anymore.

“Um …” Eric did the math in his head. He always knew exactly how many slices of apple they’d sold, even if the other numbers escaped him. “Kind of low. We didn’t even sell a whole pie yesterday. Everybody wants pumpkin ‘cause of Halloween.”

Mama nodded. “It’ll pick up again closer to the holidays.”

“Yeah,” Eric agreed. He wondered if Jack would stop in for dinner tonight; he’d said he would but now, in the light of day, Eric wondered if he regretted anything about last night. Even if he didn’t, it might be awkward.

He didn’t have to wonder or worry for very long. When Jack came in for dinner, he carried a book in one hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other.

“For me?” Eric asked in surprise.

“As long as you don’t throw them in the trash,” Jack quipped.

“Oh, you.” Eric made a show of taking them into the back and putting them in a rinsed-out can that had originally held stewed tomatoes. He set it next to the register up front.

“The usual?” Eric asked when he finally made it back to Jack’s booth.

Jack held his open menu in front of himself as he leaned in toward Eric. “Will you have dinner with me tonight” he asked, voice low.

“Mr. Zimmermann, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you’re courting me,” Eric whispered back.

“That’s the idea,” Jack replied.

*

Falling in love with Jack Zimmermann wasn’t a one and done thing. Falling in love with Jack Zimmermann happened every day, in moments big and small.

It happened when Jack nudged him awake at 5 a.m. and asked him to join him for his morning run.Eric had always been an early riser, even when he didn’t have the earliest shift at the restaurant, but it had been years since he’d gotten up early to run. He thought he’d left the morning workouts behind when he’d quit skating. They didn’t always talk on their morning runs, and sometimes it took all of Eric’s efforts just to keep up, but Jack didn’t mind slowing down for him.

It happened when Jack “introduced” Eric to his best friends, Shitty and Larissa. The three had been close since college, Jack told him, and anybody Jack “brought home” was subject to their intense scrutiny. Fortunately, all Eric had to do to pass muster with them was overnight a sour cherry pie to them. Their reaction was almost _too_ much.

“Brah!” Shitty yelled. Eric instinctively covered his ears. “Dude, that pie was _so good_. If you didn’t already have your own bakery, I would tell you to open your own bakery.”

Jack pulled Eric a little closer. “He’s opening his own place soon,” he said proudly.

“We’ll invite you to the grand opening,” Eric said, full of affection for these people who meant so much to Jack.

“Look at you two. Jackaroo, I’ve never seen you this happy. Eric, give that handsome motherfucker a kiss for me.”

Jack chuckled. “I think he’s got that taken care of.”

“As long as that’s not the only thing he’s taking care of,” Shitty said, a suggestive lift of his eyebrows enough to convey his meaning.

Eric covered his face with his hands, embarrassed by such frank discussion of his sex life.

Larissa — _Lardo_ , as she’d introduced himself — took another bite of pie and savored it for a moment. “You’re good for him,” she finally proclaimed, and her quieter approval made Eric feel as though he’d passed an important test. “Take care of him. Make sure he’s eating more than protein shakes and yogurt.”

“Who do you take me for?” Eric asked in mock outrage. “I just overnighted a pie to y’all! Trust me, he’s not eating protein shakes and yogurt on my watch.”

“His chicken tenders are good,” Jack said.

Shitty and Lardo groaned in unison. “You tried,” Lardo consoled Eric. “ _You_ ,” she said, dark eyes trained on Jack. “You take care of him.”

“I will,” Jack promised, and it sounded like forever.

And falling in love with Jack happened when Jack came to his first official Bittle family Thanksgiving, bearing a bottle of expensive wine and three bouquets of flowers: one for Eric, one for MooMaw, and one for Eric’s parents. He tried all of the food and played with Eric’s little cousins and sat beside Coach on the couch to watch the game, neither of them saying very much but murmuring their appreciation in unison when somebody made a good play.

After dinner he donned a pair of gloves and helped Eric with the dishes, splashing him with water and catching him off guard with sneaky kisses pressed to the back of his neck.

“Maybe next year we can host at our place,” Jack said casually, like having a _their place_ by this time next year was a foregone conclusion.

“What, with you in your first semester of grad school and me gettin’ a new business off the ground?” Eric chirped.

“ _If_ I get into grad school,” Jack reminded him.

“ _When_ ,” Eric said with certainty. “And if it comes down to it, we can have a pot luck.”

“If it comes down to it, we can elope that weekend and leave everyone to fend for themselves.”

“Jack Zimmermann, do not blaspheme,” Eric said, flinging a handful of soapsuds at Jack’s chest. “We could never deprive my mother of the experience of throwing the wedding of her dreams. She’s going to need at least a year to plan it.”

“She might have competition from my father,” Jack agreed. “We could never deprive him, either. You haven’t been to a Zimmermann party. You’ll see.”

Eric stayed over at Jack’s that night, and somehow fell even more in love as they collapsed onto the bed, still a little full from dinner and a more than a little tipsy after sharing the bottle of champagne they’d brought with them. 

Jack was very attentive as he pressed gentle kisses down the side of Eric’s neck, but the act was accompanied by the insistent creaking of the bed with even the tiniest movement. On the off chance that anybody was in the room next door, there would be no question as to what was happening in here.

“Oh my god. Oh my _god_ ,” Eric said, dissolving into giggles. “I can’t with this. We’re going to break the darn bed.”

“Would that be so bad?” Jack still hovered over him, their lips millimeters apart.

“It will be if we have to tell Missy at the front desk that we broke the bed.”

The mattress springs creaked ominously as Jack rolled off of him. “Okay. I’ll give you this one,” he said, smiling up at the ceiling. “I should have thought this through.”

“Well, I’m certainly not going to complain about you bein’ a little overeager.” It was romantic and endearing, the way Jack wanted him all the time, no strings attached. Jack didn’t want to be with him because of his family or the possibility Eric might give up a recipe or stake in the business. He just wanted _him_ , and every time Eric thought about it he felt all warm and gooey inside, like a slightly undercooked brownie.

“Do you like brownies?” he asked. Jack had impressed him by eating a slice of pie after dinner. It was chocolate cream, with an Oreo cookie crust, but still.

He felt the vibrations of Jack’s silent laughter. “Always thinking about baking, even in bed.”

“It’s a valid question!” Eric protested. “I was just thinking about how you make me feel all warm inside, and naturally that made me think of brownies. It’s a compliment. Trust me, if I’m dating you and I don’t want to cook for you, it’s probably not gonna last.”

He wasn’t sure where this boldness was coming from, but Jack didn’t seem to mind. He nudged Eric’s side with his elbow. “Yes, I like brownies. Did you cook for ... What was his name? Brad?”

“Chad. And no. He made a lot of noise about how great the diner is, how special to have three generations working together under one roof because people like to see families working together, but then whenever I’d offer to cook him something he’d want to take me to some trendy place in Atlanta instead. Don’t get me wrong, I love trying new things, but liquid nitrogen ‘apple pie’ is not dessert.”

“Ha ha.”

“His loss.”

“It is.” Jack grinned wolfishly. “Did _Chad_ ever take you to a cheap motel?”

“Chad took me to his uncle’s penthouse in New York City,” Eric admitted. “There was a doorman. And a bathtub with a view of the skyline.”

“My parents are rich. I can do better.”

“Your parents are rich? You hadn’t mentioned,” Eric chirped. “What are we doing in this shitty motel?” He could say things like that now. Jack knew exactly how he felt about this bed.

“Proving everyone who said all I had going for me was my family name wrong.” Jack blinked up at the ceiling. “You know, I’ve never really been able to joke about my family, or even talk about them, to somebody I’ve dated. I mean, my last girlfriend knew my parents and the guy I was with in Juniors, obviously. He was my best friend before we started fooling around … But to just talk about it casually like this is new.”

“Good new?” Something inside Eric warmed at the knowledge Jack was already so comfortable with him. He knew Jack and his ex-girlfriend had met in college and were together for several years, and that the guy from Juniors had been a big part of Jack’s life.

“It feels good to talk about it with you. It feels good to laugh about it. My life has been kind of ridiculous. Did I tell you my parents have a place in Maui? It’s near Oprah’s.”

“Let’s not get too big of a head there, Mr. Zimmermann. My parents’ neighbor was on the local news because he has a birthmark shaped like Richard Nixon.”

Jack snorted. “You win. It’s hard to compete with … that.”

Eric climbed on top of Jack and rose to his knees, straddling him. “Let’s not talk about our exes in bed. Or your parents. Or Oprah or Richard Nixon.”

“What should we talk about instead?” Jack smirked, but his body gave him away. Talking was not on this boy’s agenda.

“Who says we have to talk at all?”

The bed groaned again as Jack pulled Eric back down on top of him. Eric snorted out a laugh. “Oh my lord, this is so not sexy.”

“We can stop.” Jack rolled Eric off of him, off the bed. His instinct for self-preservation — or perhaps his old figure skating reflexes — kicked in and he grabbed at Jack, but gravity was stronger and they both ended up on the floor.

“Jack Zimmer—“ Eric was cut off by the sound of a pickup truck backfiring in the parking lot.

Jack was laughing too hard to get up, so Eric took advantage of the moment to kiss him good and hard. The bed was still marginally more comfortable than the floor, though, so they eventually made their way back to it.

The next morning Jack got up early for his run and returned with two cups of coffee and a stack of Black Friday ads he’d swiped from the motel office, and Eric fell in love all over again.


	8. Chapter 8

These days Eric came by the motel almost every night after his shift ended. He’d brought over a duvet cover, extra pillows for the bed, and an assortment of decorative and practical items Jack should have thought to furnish the place with since it functioned more like an apartment than a motel room, but hadn’t considered until Eric showed up with bags and instructions.

“That,” he’d said, wrinkling his nose in the direction of the bed, “has got to go.” Jack stood by his side, dumbfounded and a little in awe, as Eric stripped the bed of its ratty comforter and sheets and shoved them into the closet, then remade the bed with the new items he’d purchased.

Eric’s linens were functional and stylish but not fancy like the luxe sheets Jack’s mother had purchased for his condo. They were, Jack guessed, the best Eric could afford, and he loved him all the more for it.

“Help me make this, Sweetpea,” Eric said, bumping Jack with his hip as he moved around the side of the bed and shook out the mattress pad. Jack gamely crossed to the other side of the bed and helped fit the corners around the shoddy mattress, laughing to himself about Eric’s painstaking efforts to put as many layers as possible between himself and “that godawful cesspool.”

Eric had even brought new curtains to replace the broken shade that listed to one side and never quite closed.

Of course, Jack hoped to be in something more permanent soon, but for now the fresh orchids and “sugar cookie” scented candle made the place feel like home.

Or maybe it was a Eric who made it feel like home, his presence lingering after he left. Jack didn’t think it was _just_ the candle.

Eric often brought his dinner when he came over, usually leftover soup or a slice of chicken pot pie, and ate while they discussed their days. He always wanted to know where Jack had been, who he had seen, which of Madison Pie Palace’s competitors had new specials. Jack always laughed and told him not to worry, his pie was still the best in town.

“Not that you would know.” Eric always looked put out but would lean into Jack and press a sweet kiss to his cheek or poke him in the ribs.

“I just don’t like pie that much,” Jack would shrug. 

After a long day on his feet Eric usually just wanted to sit down and relax (Jack did his best to oblige him, letting him lean against him as they watched a movie or the late night talk shows), but occasionally he’d come in all keyed up, having had one too many cups of coffee to get him through the final hour of his shift. On those nights, like tonight, they walked around the motel, taking in the fresh air and whispering in the dark.

“Have you ever played never have I ever?” Eric asked.

Jack huffed out a laugh. “In juniors. And college. Not recently.”

“Well how about it, big guy?”

“Ha ha. Sure. Never have I ever —“ Jack quickly ran through a list of options in his head, choosing the one he knew would make Eric, who was still a bit conservative when it came to showing affection, blush — “kissed a boy in the moonlight in the parking lot of a cheap motel.”

“You charmer.” Eric rolled his eyes but obliged Jack with a peck on the lips. Jack quickly tugged him closer and turned what was surely intended to be a chaste kiss into something dirtier, needier. Eric gasped as Jack pressed him up against the wall and Jack felt a rush of pleasure at knowing he had made Eric make that noise. 

“Hm ... we might have to do that more often,” Eric observed when they separated. He tangled his hand in Jack’s and they continued walking. “Oh, I guess it’s my turn, isn’t it? Never have I ever — ” Eric looked around and smiled when he caught sight of the pool — “snuck into a swimming pool late at night.”

“Well that’s a shame.”

“Wait, you have? Jack, I was kidding!” Eric cried as Jack pulled him toward the pool. “I don’t think this is even how you play this game!” he yelped.

The smell of chlorine intensified as they approached. “Have you ever been night swimming?” Jack asked.

“Night swimming?” Eric looked at the sad pool and wrinkled his nose “In there?” he asked, dubious.

Jack chuckled. “Well, it doesn’t sound romantic when you put it that way.” He pulled his keycard from his pocket and swiped it to unlock the gate. They both winced at the loud creak it made as Jack pushed it open.

“When I was 13 or 14, my parents took me to Hawaii for spring break,” Jack said as they entered. “They booked a week at a hotel that had all these amazing pools because their friends had just been and their kids loved it. I’d always loved swimming when we went on vacation, so I guess it seemed like a safe bet,” he explained as he methodically toed off his shoes and took off his jeans. “But, uh, fourteen wasn’t a great time for me. It was kind of the height of my awkward phase, and I didn’t really like people looking at me, especially at the pool.”

Following Jack’s lead, Eric kicked off his own shoes and began to shimmy out of his jeans, all narrow hips and lightly defined muscle.

“It was different on the ice, because I could hide under my pads and helmet and all I had to do was play better than anybody else. But as soon as the gear came off, I was back to being myself, and I didn’t like that person very much.”

He was aware of the incongruity of his story as he took off his shirt and tossed it onto the pile of clothing at their feet. Eric looked him up and down. “Oh, honey.” He placed a cool hand on Jack’s bicep. “I like you very much, and I’m sure I would have liked you then.” Eric’s next words were muffled as he pulled his shirt over his head: “Anyway, I was no prize at 14 either. Took me a while to grow into myself.” Jack swallowed hard, willing his brain not to short circuit as Eric whipped off his shirt and gave him a sly grin. “But I think we both turned out okay.”

“Yeah,” Jack whispered. “Yeah.” Quickly, before he could overthink it, he grabbed Eric’s hand and jumped into the pool, taking Eric with him.

They surfaced, laughing and sputtering, still holding hands.

“So you and your parents used to sneak into pools at night and do this?” Eric prompted, reminding Jack he still hadn’t finished his story.

“Ah, yeah.” Jack picked up the thread of the conversation. “I think they were a little annoyed that I wasn’t excited about the rope swing and water slide, but they understood. We decided to go to swimming after dark, just the three of us. There’d be hundreds of people there all day long, but the pools were empty after the sun went down. We had them all to ourselves. And it was kind of — ”

“Magical,” Eric breathed. In the glow of the moonlight reflecting off the water and the flickering neon of the Madison Motor Inn sign, he was beautiful.

 _Magical_. That’s what this feeling Jack had felt for weeks, but had been unable to name, was. He hadn’t felt this way since … Well, he hadn’t felt this way since hockey. Being with Eric felt like skating on a fresh sheet of ice, completing a perfect pass, sending a puck straight into the net. It was a feeling Jack thought he’d lost. Who knew he’d find it again in a blond-haired baker in rural Georgia?

They stared at each other for seconds or maybe minutes, transfixed, until Eric slipped out of Jack’s grip and swam, otterlike, beneath the water’s surface. He emerged on the other side of the pool, grinning. “You gonna tread water there all alone?” he called.

Jack swam over, not nearly as gracefully as Eric, and gasped with laughter as Eric caught him.

“Bet you never did this with your parents,” Eric said, placing a hand on each of Jack’s shoulders and wrapping his legs around Jack’s waist. Like this they could see eye-to-eye, and Eric took advantage of the new perspective to trail kisses down the side of Jack’s neck.

“Tha’s not … no, definitely no,” Jack said, shivering as Eric reached the sensitive spot between his neck and shoulder.

They lost track of time, only returning to reality when, out of the corner of his eye, Jack noticed the light in the motel office flicker out.

“Probably should get out of here before we get caught,” Jack whispered.

“Probably, yeah,” Eric breathed, leaning in again to nip at Jack’s bottom lip.

Eventually, when the chill of the water became too much to ignore, he lifted Eric out of the water and followed, pushing himself up and out of the pool only to notice Eric shivering as he picked his socks out of the pile where they’d discarded their clothes.

“Towels,” Jack laughed, enfolding Eric in his arms again, hoping his body heat would provide some warmth. “We forgot towels.”

They gathered their clothes and ran, giddy, back to Jack’s room.

They took a quick, cool shower together, just long enough to rinse the chlorine off their bodies. As they passed the hotel-issued bar of soap back and forth Jack felt an unfamiliar but not unpleasant sensation in his chest, just like he did whenever Eric changed into one of his old Samwell t-shirts after work.

“Stay with me tonight,” Jack said as he stepped into a pair of boxers.

Eric was dressed in a pair of soft joggers he’d started keeping at the motel. It made Jack smile to see them mixed up in his clothes when he took them to the on-site laundry center. It made him smile more to see Eric wearing them in his bed.

“I have to be up early,” Eric whispered, taking a step toward Jack in the cramped bathroom. Jack caught him around the waist and pulled him close.

“I don’t mind.” Jack really didn’t. This thing between them was still new, yet the double bed already felt too big when he slept alone.

“I must really love you if I’m spending the night here in this one-star motel when I could be home in my own bed,” Eric teased.

“I hope so,” Jack bantered back as they climbed into bed. He slid between the sheets and wrapped himself around Eric.

The room was silent, save for the sound of their breathing and the noise of the freeway outside. Jack was sure Eric had fallen asleep when he shifted a little and asked, “Do you believe in magic?”

“Like … Harry Potter?” Jack asked, wondering why Eric was bringing this up right now.

“No, more like … destiny. Like certain things are foretold, meant to be.”

At one time the question might have made him recoil, but Jack knew Eric hadn’t asked the question with the intention of hurting him. On some level, he understood the conversation Eric was trying to have.

“I grew up being told I was special, someone great. I was supposed to do great things…”

“But …” Eric pushed. His fingers trailed down Jack’s bare chest, a barely-there touch that grounded Jack and kept him in the present.

“And then I tried to kill myself. I have a hard time believing that whatever higher power promised I would do great things wanted me dead at eighteen. 

“You have done great things.”

“But sometimes now I wonder if I was wrong. Maybe all of that had to happen because I was meant to be here all along.”

“In a run-down motel in rural Georgia?”

“Wherever you are.”

Eric went quiet, and Jack worried for a minute that he’d said the wrong thing, that he’d revealed too much of himself and his intentions. When it came to Eric Bittle, he wanted his intentions to be very clear. But then he could feel Eric smile against his chest. “You are the sweetest man I’ve ever met.”

Jack pressed his lips to the top of Eric’s head and inhaled the scent of the no-name, “compliments of Madison Motor Inn,” shampoo he’d used to rinse the chlorine out of his hair. Eric had wrinkled his nose when he’d opened it and skeptically squeezed some into his palm, and Jack had then and there vowed to run out to the drugstore tomorrow between customer calls and buy something sweet smelling for Eric to use the next time they showered together.

“What about you?” he asked Eric. “Do you believe in fate?”

For the second time, Eric waited so long to reply that Jack thought he’d fallen asleep. It was only when he noticed a damp warmth on his chest that he realized Eric was crying.

“I always thought I did,” Eric said in a watery voice. “Now I’m not sure.”

“Hey.” Jack thumbed a tear away from Eric’s cheek. “You’re crying.”

“They’re happy tears, I promise,” Eric reassured him. “Lord, this is overwhelming sometimes. I didn’t think falling in love would be like this.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, all the stories talk about love at first sight and just knowing the moment your soulmate walks in a room. I know that sounds so silly, but I really did believe that’s how it worked. Didn’t matter that I was gay and closeted until I was in my twenties; my knight in shining armor was always on his way.”

“Well, I hope you don’t mind that your knight in shining armor turned out to be a fallen hockey prince who showed up in a rented Prius.” Jack tightened his arms around Eric’s waist and lightly bumped their foreheads together. In the sliver of moonlight streaming in through the window, he could see Eric’s eyes were bright with unshed tears.

“Stop,” Eric giggled, and Jack felt something in him relax at the happiness it communicated. “As I was saying … Oh, I don’t know what I was saying. I think I thought falling in love would be this magical thing and my life would just expand to accommodate another person. I didn’t expect to discover this whole new side of myself. But here I am taking out loans for a new business and sneaking off to hotel rooms and my lord, Jack Zimmermann, if anybody had told me the love of my life didn’t even like my apple pie …”

“So we’re back to pie now.”

“Hush. That’s what I’m trying to say. I don’t care that you don’t like the pie. Just love me, okay?”

“I can do that.” Jack exhaled and felt Eric relax against him in the same moment. He was here. Eric was here. The moon outside was bright and real and so were they. Whatever had brought them together, whether destiny or a simple quirk of fate, suddenly felt very insignificant. What mattered was that they’d found each other.


	9. Chapter 9

Eric loved watching MooMaw roll out the dough for pie crust. When he was younger, he’d get up early and join her in the kitchen just to watch her work. She’d long ago passed the job on to him, but she still joined him in the kitchen some mornings to take her place behind the counter.

Her hands, now gnarled with arthritis, moved more slowly but no less carefully as she rolled out the crust for what would be a peppermint chocolate cream pie. It was a seasonal special that, over the years, had become a local favorite.“Your mama tells me you’ve been staying out late. Finally remember you’re still young enough to have a social life?”

Mama and Daddy hadn’t said anything to Eric about the nights he’d been spending away from home, but he wasn’t surprised they’d finally noticed.

“You love it, but you aren’t happy here,” MooMaw said.

Eric tried to reply, deny it, but nothing came out.

MooMaw laughed, her familiar, throaty cackle. “Don’t look so shocked, Dicky. You know how word travels in a small town. I don’t have The Sight, as my mama would call it. I’ve just been spending a lot of time with Fred Hunter.”

Fred Hunter was Deanna Hunter’s father. Deanna Hunter was the banker Eric had been talking to about his business loan.“MooMaw! You are _not_ dating Fred Hunter.”

“Never said anything about dating.” MooMaw winked.

“He wears a _gold chain_.”

“Stop trying to change the subject, Dicky. I always knew Madison wouldn’t be enough for you. Curse or no curse, I knew you’d find some way out.” MooMaw shook her head. “You know, I never even believed in that silly curse anyway?”

Eric gasped. “But —”

“Oh, I _know_ my mother believed it,” MooMaw snorted. “Even before the dementia, she believed in all that woo woo. My daughter does too, or wants to, anyway. Not a lick of sense, either one of them. But it wasn’t fair to put that on you.”

Eric could feel his world rearranging. He had to sit down. “Are you saying you don’t think magic is real?”

“If I thought magic was real, those pills I take for my arthritis every morning would work a whole lot better.”

Eric managed a weak giggle. “What does it mean if I choose Jack?”

“Maybe it means you’ve chosen somebody who loves you for who you are, with or without magic. Doesn’t make you less special. Doesn’t make your love less special. It just means you’re like the rest of us.”

“Not magic,” Eric said.

“Not magic,” MooMaw agreed. “Lucky. And that’s its own kind of magic.”

There was another thing holding Eric back. Now that the “curse” was out of the way, he could name it. “I do love it here, but I think there’s more out there. What if I don’t want to stay in Madison?” he asked.

“Maybe the only reason you’ve stayed all these years is because you’re afraid of letting us down.” MooMaw sighed. “You know that if it doesn’t work out, you can always come back home.”

“I thought you all wanted me here. That’s how it’s supposed to go, right? I fall in love, get married, have a partner who’ll help me run the business? That’s what I’m supposed to do.”

“What do _you_ want, Dicky?”

There it was again, that question. All his life, he’d done what he was told and now, for the second time in as many weeks, somebody was asking him what _he_ wanted.

Eric thought about all the things he wanted. Two days off in a row. A milkshake machine from this century. That run-down building in Athens that he already thought of as his. But in every one of those pictures in his mind, there was somebody else there beside him.

“I want _Jack_ ,” Eric choked out, hiding his face in his arm so MooMaw wouldn’t see just how much he wanted.

“Oh, honey.” Eric didn’t even realize he’d started crying until MooMaw began rubbing small circles on his back, the way she had when he was little and having feelings that were just too big to put into words. “It’s okay, honey. It’ll all work out.”

*

How do you learn to live an ordinary life if, from the day you were born, everybody has told you you’re extraordinary? That’s what Eric asked himself the next morning as he lay in bed. He decided he wouldn’t do anything differently. His life was, after all, pretty ordinary. He still lived with his parents. He baked pies for the family business. He had a boyfriend who sold restaurant supplies. Nothing about that was extraordinary, or special, or _magic_. It was just his life.

And life went on, as he went to work during the day and made plans at night. Plans for the Pie-Thru, plans with Jack, plans for a future he’d never allowed himself to imagine. Whatever he’d understood of love before meeting Jack Zimmermann was utterly unmade as he found himself actually in love for the first time.

MooMaw called a family meeting after Thanksgiving.

“It’s time we have a talk about what the future of this business looks like,” she said, looking around the table at Eric and his parents. “I’m not going to be around forever and—”

“Mama.” Suzanne put a reassuring hand on MooMaw’s. “Don’t talk like that.”

“Oh, don’t start planning my funeral now,” MooMaw snapped. “I don’t plan on going anywhere soon. But Dicky here may have other plans.”

“MooMaw!” Everything Eric had told her about himself and Jack and Athens and the Pie-Thru was supposed to be confidential.

“Well, don’t you?”

Eric looked around the table. Three sets of eyes bore into him, daring him to deny it. He took a deep breath. “Y’all are getting on in age, and deserve to enjoy your retirement. But this is a big restaurant, and it’s a lot for me to take on. We have our share of regulars who come for breakfast or dinner, but we make most of our money on pie sales.” This wasn’t exactly new information, but Eric had just spent time going over the data at Jack’s place while Jack worked on one of his grad school application essays. The gulf between pie sales and everything else was staggering.

“And costs are going up,” he added. “Everything from paper supplies to meat and coffee. The way I see it, we can keep going as we are, or we can switch things up, change the menu a bit. These days people want local and organic, fresh instead of frozen. We can throw some new daily specials on there and see what takes.”

Mama and Coach listened, clearly interested, but didn’t say anything.

“Or —,” MooMaw prompted.

“Or,” Eric continued, “we can sell the building. Rebrand and reinvent ourselves. If you want to keep the Pie Palace going, it would be easier on all of you in a smaller place, where you can just serve pie and coffee.”

“What about you?” Coach asked, perhaps sensing there was more to this plan.

Eric sat up a bit straighter. “I have enough money saved to open my own place. I’ve, uh, been looking at places over in Athens. It wouldn’t be Madison Pie Palace but I plan to use the family recipes. Like a sister restaurant. With your permission, of course.”

Asking permission was just a formality. MooMaw, who still owned the diner and her mother’s recipes, had the final say. And she’d as much as given Eric her permission.

“Are you unhappy here?” Mama asked. “I didn’t realize you weren’t happy. How long has this been going on?”

“It’s that Zimmermann boy,” Coach said, catching Eric’s eye and — was that a _wink_? “Finally somebody’s got him thinking about life beyond this town.”

Mama studied her clasped hands on the table. “You know,” she finally started, “if this is about Jack Zimmermann, we aren’t going to stop you. He’s more than welcome to join you here.”

“That’s not what he wants!” Eric snapped. “That’s not what I want. I was thinking about this before I ever met him, but I never really thought it was possible. He’s encouraged me to take this seriously, but I swear I didn’t know he was planning to move to Athens when I started looking there. I’ve stayed here for years because of some fake curse, but I found Jack on my own and he likes me and I don’t care that he doesn’t even like pie. Maybe it’s easier that way.” He looked from Mama to Coach to MooMaw, daring somebody to say something.

Finally, Coach cleared his throat. “Seems to me you’d be able to get on your feet a lot sooner if you had some extra cash to help you out.”

“I’ve already qualified for a loan,” Eric calmly replied. “It’s not a lot but it’s enough for what I’m planning.”

“What I mean, is —” Coach looked first to Mama, then to MooMaw — “you’ve been carrying this place long enough. If we sell the building, you’d be entitled to your fair share. Would that help you get set up in Athens?”

Next to Coach, Mama’s eyes went wide. MooMaw, though, just smiled slyly.

“C’mon, Suzie,” Coach said, bumping shoulders with her. “He’s right. It was different with you and me. Junior shouldn’t have to stay here just because we did.”

“Or because of a _curse_ my fool mother saddled him with,” MooMaw added. “That Zimmermann kid is head over heels in love with our Dicky, with or without a curse to tell him it’s true love.”

“He likes me and he’s never even tried the pie,” Eric pointed out.

“I’d say he more than _likes_ you,” MooMaw cackled. “We’ve all seen the way he looks at you.” Coach nodded in agreement. “Even blind Merle Watson knows how that boy feels about you.”

Three sets of eyes turned to Mama, daring her to say something.

“Is this really what you want?” Mama finally asked, voice breaking.

Eric nodded, afraid if he tried to speak he might cry too.

*

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about me and Jack before,” Eric said as Mama began to set out the ingredients for lemon meringue, her favorite. Eric thought it was because making the meringue was a process. Eric liked peeling apples when he needed to think and work through stuff. Mama had always worked out her frustrations with some egg whites and a hand mixer.

“At first,” he said, “it was because I was ashamed. I knew Jack couldn’t be the one but oh, I wanted him to be, and I thought if I could just have him for a little while it would be better than not having him at all.”

Mama cracked an egg into her mixing bowl.

“And then I thought, what if that curse was just a bunch of nonsense? Does it matter at all, if Jack loves me and I love him?”

Mama dropped the egg shells into the trash. “You really love him?”

“Mama, he’s selling his condo in Boston. He’s moving here for me. I don’t need him to magically taste the maple sugar in the apple pie to prove we belong together. He’s already done it.”

Mama didn’t ask what, exactly, Jack had done to prove it, and Eric didn’t tell her. Some things were better left private, even if your mama was your best friend.

“I guess I didn’t realize you’ve been so unhappy here,” Mama said. “That’s on me, I suppose. Seeing only what I wanted to see. You always seemed so happy working with us.”

“I have been, for the most part. But part of me wonders what I might have done with my life if I hadn’t felt like I had to stay. I could have gone away to college. I could have gone to culinary school, or worked in Atlanta for a while.”

“You got better than a culinary school education right here,” Mama said.

Eric smiled. “I did. I know I’m lucky. I just want to see if I can make it on my own, now.”

“You know, I’ve never done well with change,” Mama said. “I could have gone away but it was easier to stay. I grew up knowing there would always be a place for me here, and then your daddy was here. I never thought you might want something different. Or maybe I was being selfish. I thought by keeping you here I could keep you close.”

Eric felt like this entire conversation was like taking two steps forward and one step back, but he also knew it was going to take some time for Mama to make peace with his decision, no matter how supportive she claimed to be. “Mama, it’s not like Athens is all that far. You’re still gonna see me all the time. I could even live here and commute, if I wanted.”

“But you don’t want to, do you?”

“I know it seems like it’s too soon, but Jack and I really want to move in together when we move to Athens. Jack is going to keep his job until his graduate program begins, and he’ll still be on the road a lot, so I’ve been talking to a guy about a room until we’re ready to get a place together. He’s a PhD candidate from Russia. You’ll like him.”

“Oh, Dicky, you know I don’t speak Russian,” Mama fretted.

Eric rolled his eyes. “Alexei is bilingual, Mother. And anyway, he said he likes pie. I’m sure y’all will get along just fine.”

Mama shrugged. “It’s going to take me some time to get used to all of these changes,” she said. “But I want you to know I’m so proud of you. Your Jack seems like a keeper.”

“He is,” Eric said. “Oh, Mama. I can’t wait for you to really get to know him better. We’re good for each other.”

Mama gave a short little nod and turned on her mixer, signaling the end of the conversation for now. Eric watched the stiff peaks form in the bowl.

“You know, I may be getting my own place but I’m never going to be as good as that as you are,” he said when Mama turned off her mixer.

“I don’t expect you to be,” Mama said, a little haughtily. And she should be proud, Eric thought. Her lemon meringue looked delicate but was strong and sweet with just the right amount of sour. It was hers, the way the apple had been her mother and grandmothers’ before her.

“Maybe he likes lemon meringue,” Eric mused.

“You should make him the chocolate cream,” Mama said.

“Why that one?” he asked. Their chocolate cream pie was just a dark chocolate mousse in an Oreo cookie crust, topped with a fine layer of ganache and rich whipped cream. “It’s barely a pie at all.”

“That’s the point,” Mama said.

*

Eric put Mama’s prediction to the test a month later when he and Jack flew to Montreal for New Year’s.

It was a big step, spending a holiday with Jack’s family for the first time. Especially when he had yet to meet Jack’s parents. Even more especially knowing they were filthy rich. The Bittles did well for themselves, but “doing well” in Madison, Georgia was a far cry from “NHL Hall of Famer Bad Bob Zimmermann” and “former supermodel Alicia Zimmermann.”

“It’s going to be fine,” Jack reassured him as they waited for their luggage at baggage claim. “You meet people every day. You’re great with people.”

Eric clung tighter to the kraft paper grocery bag containing two pies that he’d carried on the plane. A little insurance, he thought, as he anticipated meeting the Zimmermanns for the first time. “I don’t meet your parents every day!” he yelped.

Jack pulled Eric against him and wrapped his arms around his middle. He didn’t seem to mind that they were in a busy airport in his hometown, surrounded by people who might not know him on sight these days but would surely recognize his beautiful and successful parents. Eric swore some of them were staring at them.

“I promise,” Jack murmured in his ear, “that the only thing they care about is that I’m happy.”

True to Jack’s words, Eric needn’t have worried.

“Eric.” Alicia Zimmermann smiled warmly when they arrived at the Zimmermann home and embraced Eric as though they’d known each other forever. “We’re so glad you were able to join us for the weekend. Jack has told us so much about you.”

“And your pie,” Jack’s father (“Call me Bob,” he’d ordered when Eric had flubbed their introduction) said. Eric had done a double-take. Of course he’d seen pictures, but they hadn’t prepared him for just how much Jack resembled his father. Bad Bob was Jack thirty years from now, albeit with an easier smile and more jovial demeanor.

“Well, I did bring some with me,” Eric said, much to both of Jack’s parents’ delight. Bob’s eyes lit up and he immediately suggested they pregame dinner by eating dessert first. When Eric raised a skeptical eyebrow Alicia — and she was beautiful too, Jack had her eyes —had simply laughed a glorious laugh and said it was a busy night, the Chinese food they’d ordered for delivery would be at least two hours.

The three of them finished off the maple apple (Jack politely declined) just as the doorbell rang and Bob took delivery of their dinner.

“So he’s always been like this?” Eric asked, indicating Jack’s plate of General Tso’s chicken, steamed rice, and vegetables.

Bob rolled his eyes fondly. “We could occasionally get him to eat broiled chicken, a burger, maybe a steak or some sushi —” Jack made a face — “ _vegetarian_ sushi, if the stars aligned correctly. But our boy likes what he likes. We stopped fighting it around the time reporters started getting a little too close to him. There was so much about our lives he couldn’t control, that he didn’t ask for. Deciding what to eat for dinner was something he could control.”

 _Oh_. Suddenly, so much made sense. Jack’s life on the road was unpredictable, different every day. Of course he would seek the comfort of a familiar meal at the end of a long day.

“Our agents were always coming to us with offers to endorse this shampoo or that outdoor gear. If only they’d asked us to do an ad for chicken nuggets,” Alicia lamented with a sly smile. She pulled Jack close and he seemed to lean into her, just a bit. “We can give him a hard time about it now.”

“Yeah, he doesn’t really eat pie, either,” Eric put in.

“Oh, pie.” Bob smirked. “What was it he used to say about your mom’s pie, babe?” Both of Jack’s parents screwed up their faces in what must have been an approximation of young Jack and whined, “Too crusty!”

“You guys,” Jack said, in quiet exasperation.

“I think it’s sweet,” Eric said, finding Jack’s foot under the table and giving it a gentle nudge. “And now that I know, I won’t ask you about pie again. So what _did_ this one like to eat for dessert?” he asked Bob and Alicia.

“Chocolate!” Alicia laughed. “Pudding, ice cream, you name it. One night when he was about three Bobby was away and I was getting dessert for us when the phone rang. I swear I turned my back for just a second and by the time I looked back he’d dragged a chair over to the counter and eaten two whole brownies. He tried to deny it but it was all over his face and pajamas. Do you remember that, Jack? We have a picture of it somewhere, I'll find it for you.”

“ _Maman_.” Jack pleaded. He looked ready to end the conversation, but things were beginning to click into place for Eric. He suddenly remembered their shared slice of chocolate cream pie, hot chocolate, the late night brownie conversation, Mama’s insistence that he make Jack the chocolate cream. What a fool he was to not have figured it out.

“Mrs. Zimm — Alicia — can I take a look around your pantry? There’s something I want to try.” His dinner forgotten, Eric bolted into the kitchen and began opening cupboards. It was a good thing Jack’s parents had told him to make himself at home.

“What are you doing?” Jack asked as Eric assembled his ingredients on the counter.

“This isn’t going to be perfect,” Eric cautioned. “But I think you’ll like it.”

*

It wasn’t his best work, but it was pretty damn good, if Eric did say so himself. He didn’t need to say it, though. All it took was one bite and Jack’s face lit up in surprise and delight.

It wasn’t the apple. It had never been the apple. Apple pie belonged to somebody else, the person Eric had been when he believed in magic and curses and a future that had been decided for him before he could decide for himself.

A pie couldn’t make the love of Eric’s life fall in love with him because Jack was already in love with him. He told Eric every morning and every night, with soft words and sweet kisses.

Even so, as Eric watched Jack savor each bite and sneakily cut a second sliver for himself, he couldn’t help but feel a little satisfied that he’d finally cracked the code.

Jack tasted like chocolate when they kissed at midnight. But he also tasted like the future, a forever that hadn’t been foretold, a road they’d travel together.

He tasted sweet, like happily ever after.


End file.
